Cotton industry set for revival

KENYA plans to revive its cotton industry, a major foreign exchange earner until the 1980s, amid strong demand for lint from domestic mills and the potential to supply manufacturers exporting clothing and textiles to the US under a preferential trade deal. The government is planning training and credit facilities for farmers as part of a bid to restore production that peaked at 38 000 tons of seed cotton in 1984-85. Kenya currently produces 15 700 tons of seed cotton, creating about 5 240 tons of lint. Demand for the latter is about 37 000 tons, with the shortfall imported from neighbouring countries, according to Fanuel Lubanga, a development manager at the state-run Agriculture and Food Authority. The initiative comes as manufacturers in east Africa’s biggest economy are counting on apparel exports to the US growing 5 percent this year after the US extended its African Growth and Opportunity Act, or Agoa, by a decade. “The potential that we have for our cotton through the Agoa exports is a strong motivation to grow the industry,” Lubanga said in an interview in Nairobi. He said national output is expected to double during the 2017 harvest, because farmers are now using seeds bought from Israel instead of recycling seeds, previously a common practice. East Africa could potentially export garments valued at as much as $3 billion (R42.23bn) annually by 2025, according to a 2015 McKinsey report. – Bloomberg