The Cotton textile exports are expected to gain double digit growth this financial year. Our last year’s exports were US$ 8.42 billion and it is expected to be US $ 9.56 billion for the current financial year.
The textile industry seems to have fully recovered from the losses it has incurred in the previous years when there was severe volatility in the national and international markets. Capacity expansion is once again beginning to happen.
Robust export growth is very essential for the financial health of the textile industry. For a profitable textile industry, it is very important to have continuous additional capacity creation required for the huge potential we have today, by way of becoming the most cost efficient manufacturers of cotton textiles and start towards achieving a growth rate of 20%. The Textiles Ministry and the Commerce Ministry have been extremely appreciative of the efforts by Texprocil and have been considering various efforts made by Texprocil positively.
Texprocil has been advocating for notification of different product groups by notifying the minimum number of HSN Codes required instead of notifying all the 8 digits under Export Promotion Schemes like Focus Product, Market Linked Focused Product etc. The DGFT has responded favourably to this and in the recently announced Foreign Trade Policy Knit Fabrics have been included in to the Focus Product List at the 2 digits level. We are hopeful that while extending the benefits to the entire value chain, the notification will be reduced to the minimum of digits.
The Home textile exports have a huge potential to add billions of dollars to our export turn over. It is also the biggest provider of employment amongst the various products our Council is handling. Home Textile Manufacturing does not differ from garment manufacturing as both of them are ‘cut and sew’, embellishments, value add and pack operations with a fair amount of design inputs. Just as jewellery exports does not discriminate between ‘bangles’ and ‘necklaces’, we feel exports of ‘cut and sew’ products should not differentiate between garments and home textiles.
Today, the high potential home textile sector is a poor cousin of the garment sector, denied all the benefits being given to the garment sector. We request the Commerce Ministry to put home textiles and garments in the same bucket while formulating policies for export promotion. We are also confident that when policies are framed, this discrimination will be removed and home textiles too can see a growth rate of 20%.
The efforts of our Textile Ministry to hugely improve the image of Indian textile by introducing DISHA (Driving Industry towards Sustainable Human Capital Advancement) Programme have reached a stage of roll out. We are also keenly looking at many of our members to be DISHA certified. This programme, in a couple of years, will dramatically improve the image of the Indian textile industry in the eyes of the world.
Export growth will reduce CAD. Instead when domestic cotton prices rule higher than International prices, we not only lose opportunities to increase exports but also add to CAD by importing equivalent cotton at 10 cents/kilo higher prices from overseas. Over 20000 tons have been contracted during the last 30 days.
The Ministry has also agreed to support Texprocil in its special focused effort to increase textile exports to’ zero’ import duty countries like Japan, Korea etc, given the fact that even to countries where we suffer duty disadvantages compared to our competitors like EU, we command a 10% market share. Therefore there is no reason why we should not capture 20% share of those markets where we actually enjoy duty preferences.
Going forward, irrespective of the global slowdown, we, at Texprocil are very bullish of our growth prospects. The Ministries of Textiles and Commerce have not only been encouraging us but to push the bar higher. With profitability returning to our mills, continuation of TUFS, and Special incentives for Power looms, Special investment allowance for textile industry, we are very optimistic that sufficient capacity will be built up and we will be able to meet with the expectations of the Ministry of Commerce and Textiles.
