Textile industry urge for supportive policy measures to grab global opportunities

Textile industry that is going through recession is looking for various supportive policy measures from the government to grab the emerging global opportunities. While the Centre looks to address macro issues particularly towards controlling inflation, improving general economic conditions, infrastructure and measures aimed at ease of doing business, the weightage given to the textile industry is not enough.

According to M Senthilkumar, Chairman, The Southern India Mills’ Association, the industry is facing severe recession for almost 18 months due to glut in the global market, market access related issues, delay in conclusion of FTAs, undue delay in disbursement of TUF subsidies and a host of other issues.

Renowned economist and corporate advisor S Gurumurthy, the SIMA Chief said that the industry faces two challenges – one on the raw material front and the other on market access.

The SIMA Chief’s appeal includes release of adequate funds to clear all pending TUF subsidies, 3 percent interest subvention for all textile products, providing suitable market specific incentives under MEIS till FTAs are concluded, reducing hank yarn obligation to 20 percent (from 40), urging Cotton Corporation to follow industry-friendly cotton trading policy, removing 5 percent import duty, 4 percent special additional duty, anti-dumping duty, reducing central excise duty to 6 percent so as to make MMF available at international price etc.

He said that during the first nine months of the current calendar year, has seen 24.3 percent decline in overall exports of which cotton textiles fell by 3.58 percent, textiles and clothing by 5.71 percent and garments by 12.02 percent.

Moreover, with the world trade undergoing certain structural changes, this has had a severe impact on Indian exports. There is a need for a slew of policy measures to bail out the ailing textile sector.

While, the Chairman of Confederation of Indian Textile Industry, Naushad Parikh has urged the government to address the raw material issue and also implement direct transfer of cotton subsidy to farmers to resolve issues relating to cotton and duty structure on manmade fibre.

The Ministry of Textiles as also the Industry and Commerce Ministry have sought various supportive policy measures from the Ministry of Finance and PMO to revive the Indian textile industry.