Mafatlal is a responsible denim producer – Mr Dayal, MD

16 Nov '10

6 min read

“Similarly, in the case of European Union, it has such agreements with countries like Bangladesh, Tunisia etc and now Pakistan too has been added to that list and again 40 sub-Saharan African countries of Africa have a similar agreement with the US, called AGOA, which provides the same type of benefits.

“Now, coming to the second category, in which, a country exports products without any benefits, like India, since it does not have any FTA's with any major economic blocs, which makes it less competitive when competing against exports from countries which can avail of FTA benefits.

“I would like to add here that, Indian denim fabric consumption is so strong, due to which, a lot many denim players are concentrating on the Indian market. It is also true that, consumption of jeans has been falling in the US and European markets, which are posting negative, flat or low growth rates, which makes the domestic market more attractive to the average Indian denim producer.

“But having said that, India has a big opportunity. I would like you to recall what I mentioned yesterday, that China is losing its competitiveness mainly due to the appreciating Yuan and its rising labour costs, while Pakistan, which has recently bagged a deal to export duty free products to the EU, has its own set of problems, both of whom are large denim producers.

“However, the developments in both these countries, throws up a big opportunity for Indian denim producers to seize the global market share of these two countries. We are seeing a new trend of global apparel brands trying to hedge their risks by also sourcing their requirements from India, apart from China and Pakistan”.

He was very eloquent and full of praise for the denim conference, when he said, “It was indeed a very excellent conference and I enjoyed it tremendously. There are two very good points I would like to say in favour of the conference.

“One, it brought together all the professionals from the denim sector on one platform in the sense that, there were people present from across the whole denim value-chain, beginning from fibres, yarn, fabric, garment, machinery, dyes and chemicals producers as well as jeans brands and retailers, who also put forth their perspectives across and I had the opportunity to interact with most of them to understand their needs and also see how we could work together”.

“The second relates to the arrangements, due to which, all of us had a nice time, for which we all want to compliment and thank fibre2fashion and The Textile Association of India (TAI) for inviting us and providing a platform to communicate with each other and also to put our views across”, he ended this very informative discussion, by saying.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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