Bangladesh, Vietnam seen as competitors in textile and garment trade

Uttar Pradesh (UP), which is among the top textile producers in India, is looking to compete with major international players like Bangladesh and Vietnam for a larger pie of the global textile and garment trade.
 

With a share of about 13 per cent, UP is one of the top three domestic textile players. Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Indonesia are the leading textile exporters in the Asia region.
 

To boost the textile sector and create half a million jobs, the UP government has approved the Uttar Pradesh Textile and Garmenting Policy 2022, which aims to attract Rs 10,000 crore of private investment in the next five years. The new textile policy aims to establish the state as a leading global textile centre, apart from fortifying the entire textile value chain—handloom, power loom, spinning, weaving, processing, etc.

Guided by the policy, the government will take proactive steps to set up five textile and garment parks with the objective of augmenting the income of handloom and power loom weavers by 50 per cent.

“The state will facilitate the modernisation of power loom and harness solar energy to run these units. We will increase silk production so as to meet our entire indigenous silk fabric demand locally,” a state government official said. Last year, the state government has suggested that the central government facilitate the removal of trade barriers for Indian apparel shipments in the lucrative European markets.
 

At that time, Indian textile exports attracted higher tariffs even as its Asian peers—Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia—faced significantly lower and even zero duty.
 

The consequent higher prices rendered Indian exports uncompetitive, thereby hurting the domestic industry.
 

“Due to high tariffs on Indian textiles, our pricing is about 10 percent higher than our key competitors, that is hurting our export potential,” then UP MSME and export promotion minister Sidharth Nath Singh has claimed.

“High tariffs faced by Indian exporters in key markets such as the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) as compared to zero duty access given to competing nations like Bangladesh and Cambodia are affecting India’s exports performance,” Union Minister of State for Textile Darshana Jardosh had said in Parliament on July 30, 2021.

UP is home to about 258,000 hand loom, and 550,000 power loom weavers. There are 58 spinning mills and 74 textile mills operating in the state. The share of UP in carpet production is a dominant 90 per cent even as the textile and garment sector is the second largest employment sector after agriculture.