The Société cotonnière du Tchad, also called Cotontchad, is a parastatal Chadian company operating in a monopoly regime that buys and exports all the cotton produced in Chad.
It was created in 1971 from the nationalisation of the Franco-Belgian society Cotonfran and had the task to collect, buy, gin, transport and export the cotton crop.
At present the state owns 75% of the company, the French Textile Development Company (Compagnie Française pour le Développement des Textiles or CFDT) 16%, a consortium of Chadian banks 6% and the French Development Agency 2%.
[1] The CFDT's main role is to market Chad's cotton on the world market, while private banks provide the credits necessary to Cotontchad and to the peasants to finance the opening of each planting season and especially to provide capital for the import and distribution of fertilisers and insecticides.
Originally the producers were protected from market fluctuations by the Cotton Price Stabilization Board (Caisse de Stabilisation des Prix du Coton or CSPC), created in 1968, whose task was to stabilise prices paid to peasant producers by funding operating losses incurred by Cotontchad.