Indian government and its textile researchers are worried about India’s poor performance in textiles compared with its easter neighbors. We need same commitment from the state and industry in Pakistan
India’s share in the global textiles exports is just 5 per cent, which is minuscule as compared to China’s share of 38 per cent. Much smaller players like Bangladesh and Vietnam have a share of 3 per cent in global exports and are increasingly threatening India’s exports observes a report by Shveta Mishra.
Some of the issues that are holding the industry back in India include higher taxes, high cost of raw materials and cheap imports. The Northern India Textile Mills Association (NITMA) alleged that a multi-stage tax is levied on every value addition. State and central taxes, plus levies are resulting in Indian yarn becoming non-competitive in global markets. Then there was high cost of raw material.
Compared to its global competitors, Indian spinning mills must spend more on raw materials, which directly affects their cost of production, and hence the country’s competitiveness in the global market. The cost of raw materials is much higher as compared to global prices, which results in a loss of 20-25 per kg to Indian mills. Also, the cotton-spinning industry has been hit by the cheaper import of garments and yarn from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. This is because of the lower cost of their raw materials as compared to India.
It is in this context that the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given its approval to set up The National Technical Textiles Mission with a total outlay of 1480 crores, with a view to positioning the country as a global leader in Technical Textiles. The Mission would have a four-year implementation period from the financial year 2020-21 to 2023-24.
Technical Textiles are a futuristic and nice segment of textiles, which are used for various applications ranging from agriculture, roads, railway tracks, sportswear, health on one end to bullet proof jacket, fireproof jackets, high altitude combat gear and space applications on other end of the spectrum.
The Mission will have four components. The component of research, innovation, and development will have an outlay of 1000 crores. The component of promotion and market development would also be there. It says that the Indian Technical Textiles segment is estimated at USD 16 Billion, which is approximately 6 per cent of the 250 billion USD global technical textiles market.
