The State Planning Commission has lately kicked off an overall setup of cotton reserves directly under central administration. As a project within state budget, it is designed for a stock of 16m dan (1 dan=50kg) of cotton, and will be finished and put into use next year.
Construction of these cotton depots will serve to improve storage and handling conditions of cotton reserves, keep a balance between market demand and supply, protect farmers' interests, guarantee textile cotton and form a high-efficient state management system. It will relieve the pressure on storage capacity and improve depot distribution to guarantee quality of cotton stock.
At a cost of 750m yuan, these depots will chiefly be built along railways, ports of cotton selling and producing areas with a proper climate. After one year's survey altogether 12 sites as Xuzhou of Jiangsu Province and Fuyang of Anhui Province have been selected out of 53 sites nationwide. Xuzhou depot had first been kicked off last December, and other sites will also enter into construction recently.
(People's Daily 03/05/2001)
