Improve spinning facilities to take on China: Expert

India, the second-largest cotton producer globally, had to strengthen its spinning facilities to bring increasing exports of raw cotton under control, said Jaynarayan Vyas, a noted expert on textiles industry.

Gujarat requires to focus on its spinning sector as it contributes one-third of the country's total cotton output.

"We should not be proud of exporting raw material to China, our immediate rival in the textiles industry," he said.

According to him, India's total raw cotton exports this year is going to touch around 70 lakh bales (170 kg each) and out of that Gujarat's share will be somewhere around 25 lakh bales. Last year, India's export of raw cotton was 55 lakh bales.

"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 1,000 crore from China," he said.

However, till we take some concrete action to strengthen our spinning facilities this exports of raw cotton will continue," he said.

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

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

Speaking on the lack of infrastructure facilities, he said, "We are losing much because of our poor infrastructure facilities. Gujarat state has developed many ports but the road network connecting these ports are poor. We will have to focus on that to increase our cargo movement and that will increase our exports, be it textiles or agri products or steel."

Pointing to the lack of infrastructure, a senior official of a major textiles company complained, "Recently, we exported some 30,000 bales of cotton and we used the Kandla port. No one can imagine the difficulties we faced because of the unavailability of containers and bad roads."

According to the official, if the exports of raw cotton are controlled, the textiles manufacturers benefit from the cheaper prices of raw cotton.

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