Indian Textile & Garment Sector Worst Affected Worldwide
The Indian textiles and apparel industry is the worst affected among various textile and garment producing countries due to various challenges.
“Challenges include on the raw material front, both cotton and manmade fibres, and a steep increase in power cost,” President of International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF), KV Srinivasan said.
“Urgent measures on policy are required to enable smooth supply of cotton at a globally competitive rate by doing away with 11 percent import duty on cotton,” he added in a press release.
“There is also an urgent need to address Quality Control Order (QCO) issue and pricing related to PTA, MEG, polyester and viscose and ensure a level playing field,” the ITMF Chief stated.
According to Srinivasan, the government should have begun implementing QCOs from finished goods as against from raw materials, due to which, the MMF value chain has been severely impacted.
He further added that the government could have avoided these two short-sighted policies when the sector is facing an unforeseen crisis that had worsened its global competitiveness.
Huge incentives offered for new investments by state governments were eroding the competitiveness of existing capacities, making them unviable and now the industry was struggling with excess capacity.
He pointed out that India which was a big producer of raw materials like cotton was not able to leverage on this advantage.
“But countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam which did not have a raw material base had achieved exponential export growth rates, while Indian exports were stagnating at $35 billion since a decade,” he added.
