Vibrant Gujarat to reiterate stand as textile investor's paradise

12 Dec '08

4 min read

The Government of Gujarat is organizing the 4th Global Investors' Summit on 12-13 January 2009. Aimed at bringing together business leaders, investors, corporations, thought leaders, policy and opinion makers; the summit serves as a perfect platform to understand and explore business opportunities in the state of Gujarat.

The previous Vibrant Gujarat summits held in the preceding years had garnered unprecedented MoUs for investments with the amounts committed increasing with each passing year. While the first 2003 summit witnessed MoUs worth US $14 billion being signed, the last summit held in 2007 witnessed MoUs signed for an overwhelming $152 billion.

The 4th summit in January 2009 is expected to cross the MoUs for investments in 2009 by a very wide margin, than those signed in 2007. The one sector which is expected to harvest a significant amount of investment is the textile sector. And why not, since Gujarat has been traditionally called the textile capital of the country since it has many notable achievements to its credit.

For instance the state is counted amongst the largest producers of cotton in the country (35 percent) with 60 percent of it being exported. It also goes to the credit of the state that it has the biggest denim capacity in India and the third largest across the globe. The state has nearly 600,000 powerlooms and they together contribute to nearly 9-10 percent of the fabric production in the country.

Gujarat has six strategically located textile clusters in all. Ahmedabad, Surat, Umargaon, Jetpur, Manavadar and Kutch. Each of these clusters has their own strengths and concentration of a particular production activity of the sector. The state is home to companies across the whole value textile chain which ensures easy availability of vital raw materials like cotton, petrochemicals, dyes and chemicals, yarns and fabrics.

The state has also not lagged behind in setting up of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and Textile Industrial Parks. A total of five SEZs have already been given the go ahead in the state, with the one at Surat already functioning and the others at Ahmedabad (1 Apparel Park and 1 Textile Park), Mundra (Integrated Park as well as SEZ) and the biggest in Anjar (Textiles and Garments) in various stages of implementation.

Amongst Industrial Parks, meant particularly for the textile and garment industry, six have been approved under the Textile Integrated Park Scheme. This includes the one at Mundra, four in Surat and one more in Ahmedabad.

Technical textiles are considered the next growth driver of the textile industry. The current market size in India is $4.87 billion and is projected to reach $12 billion by 2010. The state boasts of 860 small and big units engaged in production of technical textiles, which churn out a wide range of fabrics meant for performance based textiles.

Ahlstrom, Finland based market leader in medical textiles has committed an investment of $2 billion to set up a medical textiles plant in Mundra SEZ. SKAPS, USA, a leading manufacturer of geo-textiles has also proposed to set up a unit at the same SEZ. Gujarat is also home and base to the leading textile and garment brands in India like Reliance Industries Ltd. Arvind Ltd, Wellspun Ltd, Ashima Ltd., Raymonds, Vardhman, Digjam and a host of others.

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