The Indian Taxpreneurs Federation (ITF), an apex body of textile industry in the regions today put forth its views to the Centre to take the textile sector towards the $300 billion export target by 2024-25.

In a letter to Textiles Minister, Smriti Irani, ITF secretary Prabhu Damodharan said ever since the launch of ‘Make in India’ campaign, the sector was getting special attention from the Centre.]

“The recently announced special package and the appointment of an able Cabinet Minister for textile sector, clearly exhibited the Government’s decision to drive growth in this sector and to create millions of new employment,” he said.

In the last two years, the ministry had created a good platform for growth by improving the efficiency in the system and also designed good policies to trigger growth.

To strategise the segment wise exports and fix export targets for individual category of items, “the industry and the ministry should jointly execute the ideas,” Prabhu said and added that India had more than 60 per cent market share in yarn exports to Bangladesh, but it was a meagre 12 per cent in fabrics.

“Year-on-year Bangladesh is reducing the imports of yarn and increasing the imports of fabrics. Indian industry is now equipped with capacities to export fabrics and can capture this huge market if the ministry and industry worked in tandem,” Prabhu pointed out.

Stating that an immediate PTA with the United Kingdom would help to strengthen India’s position, Prabhu said apart from the traditional markets, tremendous effort was required to tap in new markets such as Russia, where India’s share was Rs. 500 crores of the total import of Rs. 65,000 crores.

In spite of all the technological advancement, India was not able to figure out the exact crop size and exact estimates and stock levels of cotton, leading to heavy speculation, as witnessed in the last 60 days, when there was a 35 per cent spurt in prices, he added.

The Government should idealise a strong mechanism to analyse and announce the exact cotton crop and stock data once a month, he suggested.

Stating that the fashion world was moving towards cotton man made fibre (MMF) blends, he pointed out that with high MMF prices, Indian industry was lagging behind in the fastest growing segment of textiles and duty rationalization of MMF fibres would trigger tremendous growth in the segment.

Prabhu also requested Smriti to visit the important trade clusters and have a direct connect with the regional industry associations in order to understand the scope of growth in each major cluster and start collaboration towards growth.