Swaziland Cotton Board aims to ease govt burden

23 Jul '12

2 min read

The Swaziland Cotton Board has said that it wants to relieve the Government from subsidizing it as the country’s cotton production increases.

The administrative department of the Cotton Board to a larger extent depends on the E one million subsidies that it each year gets from the Government. However, now there are good possibilities that once the Board gets over the issue of low production of cotton, Government can stop subsidising it, the Annual Report of the Board for year ending March 31, 2011 states.

The report states that great improvement was noticed in performance of Sikhulile Ginnery, whose overall revenues increased from previous year’s E 8.1 million to E 14.1 million during the review period.

This led to a rise in the Board’s earnings from ginneries to E 401,430, while its overall profits touched E 236,101, the report states. This increase was achieved through a rise in raw cotton intake, which increased from previous year’s 1,561 tons to 2,349 tons during the review period.

The report notes that backed by good harvest and reasonable price that cotton procured during the previous year, all regions of the country were quite interested in undertaking cotton cultivation even prior to commencement of the cultivation season, which persuaded the Board to undertake bulk procurement of planting seeds, which were provided to farmers.

According to the report, 3,010 farmers, who participated in cotton cultivation during the review season, received financial assistance for raw inputs from the Board’s total earmarked sum of E 4 million.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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