18th October 2021, Mumbai:
India's Ministry of Textiles has stated that the country's textile and garment exports have the potential to reach the US $ 100 billion. This appears to be a far-fetched aim without a clear plan and implementation.
Team Apparel Resources has outlined a comprehensive roadmap to recommend to the Indian sector the product categories and nations that the country should target, as well as certain government measures to increase exports.
Since Piyush Goyal became Minister of Textiles in India, he has been very proactive, and in a recent meeting with the country's top textile and garment exporters, he asked them to aim for a US $ 100 billion figure in textile and apparel exports, up from the current export value of US $ 33 billion, which is almost three times more!
Despite the fact that the goal expectation is high and no time frame has been set, the industry thinks that the number may be met in the near future with a clear roadmap to capitalise on global trade possibilities.
While India's clothing and textile exports have been on a downward trend for the past three years, the start of 2021 has been fantastic. According to OTEXA, India's textile and apparel exports to the United States, its single largest market, increased 54.58 percent in the first seven months of 2021.
This is the fastest-growing of the top five countries exporting textiles and apparel to the United States. In 2021, the other four top destinations – Vietnam (increase 17.60%), Bangladesh (up 29.19%), China (up 27.95%), and Mexico (up 31.12%) – remained in second place after India.
Despite having a well-developed domestic textile supply chain, India has been overtaken by competitors like Vietnam, Bangladesh, China, and Mexico, which have grown considerably quicker in major markets such as the United States and the European Union.
However, based on the above-mentioned data, 2021 has witnessed a reversal of this tendency, notably in the US market. Higher export order booking for apparel and a big consolidation in the home textile category, where India has historically been a prominent participant, are two factors mentioned by the industry for this promising result.
The country may be able to stay afloat in 2021 thanks to less severe lockdown restrictions in the country's export hubs, particularly in southern states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, during the second COVID-19 wave, which did not have a significant impact on business activity in the April-June '21 quarter.
Is this, however, a long-term trend? No, not until the industry is completely revitalised from the ground up.
While officials at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry have consistently maintained their stance on duty remission schemes such as RoDTEP (Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products) and RoSCTL (Rebate of State and Central Taxes and Levies) that have aided exporters in the garments and textiles sector, stakeholders have consistently expressed their concerns about tax rebate schemes that have been delayed and have provided lower-than-expected benefits.
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