Wal-Mart raises sourcing target from India to $300 m

The Indian textile story is singing. Wal-Mart, the global retail chain, is upwardly revising its sourcing targets from India driven largely by textiles.

The company's sourcing from India has been growing 30 per cent year on year for the past three years, and it now says it intends to grow this by 40 per cent for the current financial year.

The global major has so far sourced goods worth about $1.2 billion and intends to source goods worth a little over $300 million this fiscal.

A Wal-Mart India spokesperson confirmed this and remarked that textiles from Indian are the major growth driver for the company.

"Nearly 50 per cent of our total sourcing from India is from textiles such as apparel and home furnishings, and we are pretty bullish on India. We are targeting to grow by 40 per cent this year as against our earlier estimate of 30 per cent growth," he said.

Wal-Mart currently sources goods from a number of large textile exporters outside India and is planning to add a couple of big players to this list.

"We are aggressively looking at companies, which will fit into our sourcing strategy, and should be finalising two major sourcing deals in the near future," he added.

Besides textiles, Wal-Mart sources goods from India in a big way from the leather and the jewellery sectors and is exploring the food sector, too.

It has set sights on commodity items such as spices, rice, tea and sea foods to widen its scope of sourcing from the country.

Wal-Mart is lobbying hard to open the Indian retail sector to foreign direct investment (FDI).

But since its president & CEO John B Menzer recently visited India and had high-level talks with the Central government, "there has been no further progress, other than that this issue of opening FDI in retail will be looked into," the spokesperson noted.

ASIA CALLING

• Wal-Mart's sourcing from India has been growing 30% year on year for the past three years.
• It intends to source goods to India worth a little over $300 million this fiscal.
• Nearly 50% of the total sourcing from India is from textiles such as apparel and home furnishings.