Textile & garment sector shines in midst of all odds

28 Mar '08

3 min read

The Indian rupee appreciation and interest escalation has been a cause of worry for the exporters nation wide, as it reduced their earnings and to some extent hampered their position in international market.

The sector is also going through rough phase as other Asian countries are giving stiff competition to the domestic enterprises which are already disturbed due to increasing input costs and implementation of new labour laws.

In order to know more about the current scenario of exports of the Indian textile industry in terms of volume and value, Fibre2fashion contacted Mr D K Nair, Secretary General, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI). Mr Nair divulged, "The exports to US have experienced a slight increase of 0.53 percent in the month of January when compared to the same period last year. It shows that in terms of rupee, there is a negative growth of more than 10 percent."

Expressing his dissatisfaction over the export output to US, the Secretary General, articulated, "The industry has been trying to add value to the products and improve productivity through modernisation and expansion of capacities. But there are limitations on improving cost competitiveness through these measures, since we have been focussing on these areas in the past also. However, huge investments have taken place during the last two years, which have been substantially higher than those in the past."

Talking about CITI's effrots in improving the present situation, Mr Nair further said, "Although, the Government has announced some relief packages for exporters, it is awefully inadequate to address the problem. We have approached the authorities to take certain steps like return of state level duties to exporters, declaring a moratorium of one year for repayment of term loans, making packing credit in foreign currency available to T&C industry.

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