Hike prices of knitwear products, urges TEA

Raja M Shanmugham, President, Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA), has urged buyers to hike prices of knitwear products for Tirupur's exports to sustain in the challenging business environment prevailing for the past four months.

The textile town in Tamil Nadu exports products worth about Rs 27,000 crore. After the central government increased the minimum support price for cotton (kappas) procured from farmers, lint (ginned cotton) prices have risen from Rs 36,016/candy (355.54 kgs) in August 2020 to Rs 46,720/candy in March 2021 and the association has asked the Ministry of Textiles to intervene in the matter.

Shanmugham said that the increase in cotton yarn prices, coupled with an increase in prices of accessories and dyeing charges have made the manufacturing of garments costlier. He pointed out that the fabric cost for manufacturing garments was Rs 384.16/kg in the month of August 2020 has now gone up to Rs 464.8/kg, an increase of 21 per cent.

Shanmugham said in the case of cotton and Spandex yarn, due to the increase in prices of Spandex yarn, the cost for manufacturing garments was Rs 432.32/kg in August 2020 and had now (March 2021) gone up to Rs 546.56/kg, an increase of 26 per cent.

The association has appealed to buyers to consider the overall increase in the prices of fabricand requested them to revise the prices of garments to achieve a win-win situation.