“Textile industry has the potential to resolve the problem of ever rising Current Account Deficit (CAD) and can strengthen the continuously weakening rupee, if speedy decisions are taken and favourable policies are drafted and implemented on urgent basis to support the textile sector”, emphasized Dr Kavuru Sambasiva Rao, Hon’ble Union Minister for Textile, Government of India while addressing around 200 leading Textile and Clothing industrialists and R & D experts from India and abroad at Confederation of Indian Industry’s flagship event for Textile sector - Texcon 2013, here today.
“Textile industry is also capable of contributing tremendously to the national GDP by creating numerous jobs. But to achieve this, we need to integrate the sector, build a chain and should only export the finished products, retail garments, apparels, non woven fabrics, composites etc after adding value and not the raw materials”, he further emphasized.
“I have assured the Prime Minister that, the textile sector can easily touch exports of 43.7 billion US $ next year, a rise of 30 % over the 33.7 billion US $ exports in 2012. Textile sector in India has tremendous potential considering, strong production base, labour, strong domestic demand etc”.
Dr Rao also said that the new textile policy is on the anvil and is going to be announced soon with lotof incentives for the textile sector. “There is indeed a need for softer labour laws for the textile sector and creation of best infrastructure, providing easy and cheaper power, land and credit to attract investments in the textile industry and achieve its true potential.
The minister also released the CII Report on India; An Attractive investment & sourcing destination.
Ms Sunaina Tomar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Textiles shared that “lack of competitiveness and infrastructure has been holding the textile sector back. So we have launched Textile Clusters under PPP mode to provide best infrastructure support to the industry and achieve optimization”. She also called for a paper on the various issues and suggestions of the industry.
Mr Sachit Jain, Co-Chairman, CII National Textile Committee & Executive Director, Vardhman Textiles said that “The Indian textile sector which employs 90 million people directly or indirectly today desperately needs huge investments in latest machinery, R & D, innovation, Free Trade agreements with European Union, FDI, Joint Ventures (JVs), and stable government policies, if it has to grow to its true potential. 60 % of what is bought today is non - cotton, synthetic and man - made fabric. Hence both Indian textile industry and the government should also change focus from cotton yarns to synthetic fabrics to be globally competitive”, he added.
Mr D L Sharma, Conference Chairman and Director, Vardhman Textiles Ltd shared that “Even countries like Bangladesh, Turkey, Vietnam have created their Unique Selling Points (USPs) and have managed to come out with a very well organized textile sector. It’s high time India also created its USP which could be “Scales with flexible order size & focus on skills & design”.
Mr Gautam Nair, Conference Co Chairman, & MD Matrix Clothing P Ltd said that India has a tremendous potential to be the sourcing and investment destination for the world in textile sector considering its designing & Creativity skills, Large labour base, availability of fabrics, competitive labour costs. But still, unfortunately, India’s share in the world textile exports is only 3 % as compared to China’s 37.5 %. This immense potential can be achieved if and only if there is proper integration and partnerships between retailers and manufacturers, favourable policies and proper infrastructure support.
Mr Prashant Agarwal, Joint Managing Director, Wazir Advisors shared that “India has a great potential globally in the textiles scenario. Currently, the global trade in the Textiles & Apparels sector stands at $ 700 billion of which India’s exports account for a meager $ 34 billion, hence leaving a huge gap. Domestically though at $ 57 billion, Indian Textile Industry is still underplayed and not growing because of various constraints like small scales of production, low finance availability, lack of skilled labour, poor designs and low productivity”.
Mr Pikender Pal Singh, Regional Director, CII Northern Region shared that it is CII’s continous endeavour to create awareness about recent global and domestic trends in the textile sector, sharing information about recent advancements in textile manufacturing technology, promote India as a preferred investment destination, advocate policy initiatives with the government on all fronts to help foster industry and to intergrate government policies with industry’s strategies. Texcon 2013 was also one such initiative for the benefit of the industry.