Half of the autumn cotton harvest in northwest China's Xinjiang region remains unsold as demand from textile and garment makers has weakened amid the global slowdown, state media said Thursday.
Planters in Xinjiang, China's largest cotton plantation area, are left with more than a million tonnes of unsold cotton, as bulging stockpiles have turned dealers into reluctant buyers, the Xinhua news agency said.
Even an offer from policy lender Agricultural Development Bank of China of 22.4 billion yuan (3.3 billion dollars) in credit to potential buyers has failed to trigger any major interest, it said.
Xu Wenying, head of the China Cotton Textile Industry Association, attributed the situation to shrinking demand from the textile industry.
"Textile and garment factories in south China are having difficulties in eking out business, as the industry has become one of the hardest hit in the global financial crisis," he said, according to Xinhua.
Xinjiang, which has 1.6 million hectares (four million acres) of cotton fields, produced 2.9 million tonnes of cotton last year, accounting for more than one third of the country's total, the report said.
Millions of impoverished farmers find seasonal jobs in the region every year picking cotton, it said.
