The Indian government has decided to have a longer tenure of 10 years for the proposed Cotton Productivity Mission after the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) suggested the initially proposed 5-year tenure was not enough, sources said. The ICAR, which is piloting the mission, is awaiting the Agriculture Department’s inputs to finalise it, The mission was announced in the 2025-26 Budget.
Even as the rollout of plan gets delayed, the Ministry of Textiles is said to be insisting on using the funding from the proposed Mission for modernisation of ginning factories even after its proposal was negated by the Department of Expenditure as well as Niti Aayog, sources said.
After this, the initial plan to put the expenditure of the Cotton Productivity Mission at about Rs 5,000 crore, including about Rs 4,000 crore proposed to be spent by the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, may undergo an upward revision, depending on the tenure of its implementation.
