India to export 200,000 bales of cotton to China

MUMBAI, Apr 09 (Reuters): India has signed contracts to export 200,000 bales of cotton to China in the past one week, the head of a trade body said, after Beijing last week sought to impose tariffs on cotton supplies from the United States.

India, the world's second-biggest cotton exporter, is expected to export 7.0 million bales (each of 170 kg) of the fibre in 2017/18 against 5.8 million bales shipped in the 2016/17 season, Atul Ganatra, president of the Cotton Association of India, told Reuters.

India is looking to sell 2.5 million to 3.0 million bales to China in the next season beginning October, up from around 800,000 bales of expected exports in the 2017/18 marketing year, Ganatra said earlier.