T Rajkumar is chairman of the Product Advisory Committee. While seeking wholehearted cooperation and support from the committee members, Rajkumar as Chairman of PAC said that most of the contract specifications have been modified to curb speculation and protect the interests of the entire cotton value chain including the farmers.

An urgent concern of the cotton textile industry has been the unprecedented volatility in raw cotton prices in domestic as well as international markets. In a bid to address the price volatility of cotton, stakeholders from the sector represented the matter to SEBI and MCX with a request to take measures to make the futures market more representative of the market trends and address the concerns arising out of the volatility.As short-term corrective measures, the Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) suspended trading in all-cotton futures contracts on Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) from January 2023 and subsequent contracts were temporarily not available for trading till the revised contract specifications are finalized.

For long term solutions, in a joint meeting of SEBI with the MCX and cotton value-chain participants, it was decided that the cotton contract specifications shall be revisited and modified in consultation with the product advisory committee of the exchange and other stakeholders.