Cotton Prices Will Be: Lower In The Long-Term

摘要

Increasing production and declining import demand could translate into a mid-double-digit decline in the Cotlook A Index average price for 2004/05, Terry Townsend reported at the ITMF Conference, Lucerne. The price of cotton, adjusted for inflation, is tending I downward over the long run. This is a phenomenon common to many primary commodity industries which results naturally and inevitably from market forces in a competitive world economy. If inflation is considered, cotton prices have been fallingsince the 1950s. Estimates of average prices were more than 3 dollar per pound of lint in todays prices in the early 1950s, and the average Cotlook A Index this season will be between 50 cents and 60 cents per pound. In nominal prices, or not adjusted for inflation, the Cotlook A Index averaged 70 cents per pound during the 30-year period from 1973/74 through 2002/03.