India-the government to limit the export of raw cotton to 5.5 million bales, during the cotton season 2010-11.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) through a notification has announced that it will start registering contracts for cotton exports between December 31, 2010 and January 6, 2011, for the unequipped quantity of 5.5 million cotton bales, which could not be exported by December 15, 2010.

In October, the government had granted permission to export 5.5 million bales (1 bale= 170 kg) of raw cotton and appointed the Textile Commissioners Office as the authority to register the export contracts. Along with which it had also set a deadline of December 15, 2010 to ship these 5.5 million bales.

DGFT is collecting the data for cotton bales shipped between November 1 and December 15 and allocation will made for the balance quantity keeping in view the decision of the government to limit the export of raw cotton to 5.5 million bales, during the cotton season 2010-11.

Allocation will be done on a pro-rata basis with a ceiling of 100,000 bales and floor of 500 bales per IEC. Secondly, exporters who did not export full quantity for which registration certificate was obtained by them from Textile Commissioner, Mumbai in October, 2010, would be dis-incentive's by reduction of their pro-rate quantity by the percentage of such default.

As per sources from the Textile Commissioners Office, around 3.4 million bales have been shipped till December 15.