11:57 AM
Monday 06 September 2021
I wrote – Shaima Hefzy:
The Ministry of Public Business Sector said, in a statement today, Monday, that the price of cotton in the first public auction for sale in the new season amounted to about 3,715 pounds per quintal.
This week, the first cotton auction for the 2021-2022 season was held at the Nuwairah Assembly Center in the Ihnasia Center in Beni Suef Governorate, according to the statement.
According to the statement, a quantity of 398 bags was auctioned, weighing 475.5 quintals of cotton (Giza 95), where it was awarded to a private sector company (Abu Madawi) at a price of 3,715 pounds per quintal.
The Ministry of Public Enterprise Sector began receiving cotton from farmers, with the start of the cotton marketing and selling season, as part of the new system that it is implementing for the third year in a row.
In the season before last, the ministry launched a new system for the circulation of cotton based on public auctions on cast cotton, and applied it in two governorates, then raised the number of governorates to 4 during the last season, before the system was generalized in all governorates this year.
The ministry said that it has opened 21 centers to receive cotton directly from farmers, without the need for intermediaries or jellies, in the announced governorates on all days of the week, except Friday, from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon.
The centers are divided into 10 centers in Fayoum, 7 centers in Beni Suef, one center in Minya, one in Sohag, and two centers in Assiut, according to the ministry.
The price trading system applies a pricing mechanism to determine the price for opening auctions, which is bid on by traders, whether in the government or private sectors, and the price of a pound increases according to the degree of its purity and rank.
The pricing mechanism for opening auctions will be at the average price of Index A – which is the average price of cotton worldwide – in addition to a margin of 20% of the index price for cotton in Upper Egypt and 40% for cotton in Lower Egypt. These bases were approved by the Ministerial Committee, provided that the purchase price rises from The farmer, according to the bidding, the greater the farmer’s interest in cotton and the rank of its purity.
Ali Abu Madawi, a trader and representative of the private sector in the ministerial committee supervising the trading of cotton, had previously told Masrawy that the purchase prices of cotton from farmers this season will be higher compared to the last season, due to the increase in cotton prices on global stock exchanges with the increase in demand.
As Abu Madawi expected, the opening price of the auction would be 2,600 pounds for a quintal of cotton Giza 95, and about 3 thousand pounds for the opening price of cotton, Lower Egypt, and the farmer would get a higher price the more his interest in cotton increased during the harvest.
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