Indian leather exporters upbeat over the future

24 May '11

2 min read

Over the next six months, the Indian leather sector expects the market conditions in its conventional export markets like the US and the Europe to stabilize.

The demand for leather items in these traditional export markets is rising steadily and is expected to even out within next six months. It could also other unexploited markets like Latin America, CIS countries and North Africa.

Experts believe that the leather business in traditional markets is stabilizing at a higher pace than expected.

As far as progress of exports in new markets is concerned, though leather exporters have begun to explore new destinations, presently the growth is not substantial; it is still developing as demand is slowly perking up.

The EU recently withdrew the anti-dumping duties that it had levied on leather footwear imports from China and Vietnam, but in spite of this India's exports to the US and EU remained unaffected.

The Indian leather industry actually suffered a massive setback over the last two years as it was hit by the global recessionary pressures, which resulted in slow-down of demand from the EU and the US.

Around 80 percent of India's overall leather exports are towards EU and the US. India's key leather exports are towards Germany which accounts for 14 percent, UK about 13 percent, France 17 percent, Spain 16.25 percent, Italy 11.6 percent and the US around 9 percent.

Leather exporters in the country are now looking at new markets like Jordan, Latin America, Turkey, Africa and the Middle East to trim down their reliance on the conventional western markets.

Indian leather exporters have set a target to earn US $8.5 billion in revenues from exports over the next three years, and to surpass the US $3.75 billion mark, this year itself. This is likely to bring about around 700,000 new job opportunities in the country in the future.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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