From the volume of Indian cotton on the market recently, the 22/23 Indian cotton yield is lower than expected in the previous period, which is a support for Indian cotton prices. However, the downstream demand is relatively weak, and it will be further inhibited by high cotton prices. Whether cotton import tariffs will be liberalized later is not yet known, but from the sales performance in the terminal market in India, it is not optimistic. The following chart shows the trend of Indian cotton prices so far in 2017. As can be seen from the chart above, Indian cotton price in 2017-2020 hovered at 40,000rupees/candy for a long time, and last year it rose sharply to a high of more than 100,000 rupees/candy (the highest level was equal to $166 cents/lb), after which the price began to fall. However, as of yesterday, Indian cotton price remained above 63,000 rupees/candy (equal to $97 cents/lb), which is still at the high level of global cotton prices. High cotton prices inhibit consumption, coupled with weakening overseas demand, India's textile and apparel exports have fallen sharply for several months in a row. The latest data show that the preliminary value of India's textile and apparel exports in November fell 15.5% year-on-year, which has been five consecutive months of double-digit decline. Apparel exports performed better than textiles, and the latter declined by 30% y-o-y in November. From January to November, India's textile and apparel exports fell 2.4% year-on-year, of which textiles dropped by 11%, but apparel grew by 11.1%, indicating that India's textile exports shrink obviously this year. India's textile exports fell much faster than apparel, which have turned negative year-on-year since May this year, while apparel only began to shrink in July. Since India's textile and apparel exports are mainly affected by the sharp decline in textile exports, which category of textile is considered the most obvious?   India's main exports are textiles, and apparel comes next. Textile products such as cotton and yarn products account for nearly one-third of the total, down 3.6 percentage points compared with the proportion of the same period last year, down 12.2% over the same period last year. The decline in other varieties is relatively small, indicating that the decline in India's textile and apparel exports this year is mainly weighed down by cotton textiles. Our detailed analysis is as follows.   This year, Indian cotton textile exports have shrunk sharply since May, and its proportion of textile and apparel exports also fell from 36.5% in January to near 30%, down more than 6pp, and nearly 10 pp from the high point. It shows that India's cotton textile exports are significantly hampered. In addition to weakening demand with external orders, it may also relate to the decline in competitiveness of Indian cotton textiles due to the continued high cotton prices in India last year. To sum up, India's cotton prices are still in a high position. And the improvement among its domestic midstream and upstream spinning and weaving mills is not significant, the operating rate of which is maintained at low level. Thus, the actual international competitiveness of India's textiles is not prominent.