Spinning sector needs attention: expert

India needs to strengthen its spinning facilities to curb the rising export of cotton as raw material.

Jaynarayan Vyas, a noted expert on the Indian textile industry told Business Standard that we "ought not be proud of exporting raw material to China, our immediate rival in the textiles industry."

As per industry estimates, India's total raw cotton exports is likely to touch around 70 lakh bales (170 Kg each) this year.

Of this, Gujarat's share is likely to be around 25 lakh bales. Last year India's exported 55 lakh bales of raw cotton.

"China is emerging as the biggest buyer of our cotton. The fact is that they are buying our raw cotton and supplying us the fabric or yarn. Last year, India imported cotton fabric worth Rs 1000 crore from China. However, until we take concrete action to strengthen our spinning facilities, exports of raw cotton will continue," Vyas said.

"We should focus on exports of value added products which will not only bring more revenue but will also strengthen our local industry and create more employment opportunities," Vyas said. He added that earlier, Gujarat had some of India's best spinning facilities.

"Now we don't have a single spinning unit which can match the spinning units in Tirupur and in Agra. There are some units coming up but the sector needs extra attention," he said.

He stressed on the need to improve existing infrastructure. "Gujarat has developed many ports but the road network connecting those ports is poor. We have to focus on that to increase our cargo movement," he added.

A senior official of a major home textiles manufacturing company told BS that they had faced immense difficulty in exporting around 30,000 bales of cotton from Kandla port due to non-availability of containers and bad roads.

He added that if exports of raw cotton were controlled, textiles manufacturers would have the benefit of cheaper prices of the raw cotton.

"However, we don't have any alternative at present as our spinning facilities are not sufficient enough to utilise the increasing output of cotton," he said.