Ivory Coast's raw cotton output for the 2016/17 season is expected to reach 360,000 tonnes, a 16 percent increase on last year, the cotton ginners' association said on Friday.

Output fell to 310,000 tonnes in the 2015/16 season due to bad weather, after reaching 450,000 tonnes the year before.

"In the north, the rain has started up again and it's going well. But in the centre, the rain is too late," the association's executive secretary Christophe N'Dry said.

Ivorian authorities are targeting annual production of 600,000 tonnes by 2020.

N'Dry said 343,000 hectares of cotton had been planted this season, and about 94,000 farmers were involved in the crop, compared with about 113,500 farmers the previous year.

Some were in debt and stopped farming after last year's bad season, when the national output dropped by 30 percent following a bad weather.

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, was one of West Africa's major cotton exporters, with an annual output of about 400,000 tonnes before a 2002-2003 civil war split the country in two and halved production.