Coimbatore : Since standardisation has been notified, India can become one of the most competitive economies in the field of technical textiles, like medical textiles, Union Textile Minister Smriti Zubin Irani said on Sunday.

Speaking after inaugurating a three-day Reverse Buyers Sellers Meet and Global Textile Expo here, Smriti told the foreign buyers from over 20 countries that India recently ensured that HSN codes were notified for over 207 textile items.

In the area of cotton, India has a surging potential particularly in the field of medical textiles and because of standardisation the country can become the most competitive economies in the tecnnical textile, she said and appealed to Tamil Nadu to unleash the untapped potential so that the State can be in the forefront.

It was expected that the technical textiles market likely to touch three billion USD in another two and half years, she said.

Smriti said that amongst all the schemes that has been enunciated and presented to textile industry, most of the benefits has been acquired and established by the state of Tamil Nadu.

She highlighted various schemes where Tamil Nadu gained most, which include yarn bank scheme, powertex, powerloom cluster, group insurance scheme under social security and also GST.

Stating that the visiting foreign buyers may be wondering why she was talking about the schemes, subsidies and taxation in this meet, which was to initiate buyers and sellers, the Minister said “We are hoping to lessen the burden on our units so that they become competitive in terms of price. we become best price point.”

Tamil Nadu Handlooms Minister, O S Manian appealed to the youngsters of this generation to come forward to weaving and textile industry and to show young talents and innovations to uplift the livelihood of weavers and the textile industry as a whole.

He also appealed to the textile minister to take steps to establish a powerloom textile market either in Somanur in Coimbatore district or Palladam in Tirupur district.

State Municipal Administration minister, S P Velumani, Deputy speaker of Tamil Nadu Assembly, Pollachi V Jayaraman and chairpersons of Texprocil, Pdexcil also spoke on the occasion.