Policy aims at helping textile industry attain $650 bn size

The draft new Textiles Policy has set an ambitious target of achieving 20 per cent share of global trade and and helping the domestic industry attain a size of USD 650 billion by 2024-25 by focussing on investments, skill development and labour law reforms.
The policy blueprint, termed as the draft 'Vision, Strategy and Action Plan' for the textiles and apparel industry, lays thrust upon diversification of exports through new products and markets alongwith increasing value addition, promoting innovation and R & D activities.
It also calls for adoption of a new approach towards handloom and handicrafts sector by re-engineering existing schemes and policies and enhanced partnership with the state governments.

The action plan entails attracting investment of about USD 120 billion by 2024-25 and creating about 35 million additional jobs in the process.
As part of the policy's objectives, Indian textile and apparel exports are also expected to rise from USD 39 billion at present to USD 300 billion by the year 2024-25.
The action plan notes that attracting the required investment entails ready availability of developed land with adequate infrastructure, skilled manpower and easy connectivity to ports, along with creation of new mega textile parks, lowering the cost of production and logistics, encouraging new entrants through start-ups as well as FDI.

To realise the skill development objectives, it says that abundant availability of trained and certified manpower should become the norm in three years.

"The objective should be to achieve average per man hour, per machine output in terms of quality and quantity of the levels prevailing in China over the next 3 to 5 years.
"The Ministry of Textiles needs to evolve a credible mechanism for tracking improvements in quality and productivity across the value chain as well as across individual enterprises. A program for assisting individual firms in improving on both parameters needs to be implemented," according to the document.

The action plan focusses upon the immediate need to review the labour laws to make them investor and labour friendly in order to attract large-scale investments, acquiring global scale and bring the Indian sector at par with other competing countries.
The draft policy has been prepared by an expert panel constituted by the government. The panel is headed by Member Secretary in the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council Ajay Shankar.
Keeping in view the various changes in the textile industry on the domestic and international fronts and the need for a roadmap for the textile & apparel industry, Ministry of Textiles had initiated the process of reviewing the National Textile Policy, 2000.

Accordingly, the expert committee was constituted including leading industrialists from the textile sector to make fresh recommendations.