Union Minister of Textiles, Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs and Food & Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal said that Textile Industry has a big role to play in making Free Trade Agreements a success.
Delivering the Keynote address at the 10th Asian Textiles Conference TEXCON on the theme – ‘Reimagining the Textile and Apparel Industry for the next Decade’, he said that FTAs with Developed Countries is high on the agenda of Modi Government.
He highlighted the role of innovation across all value chains in the Textile sector and also urged the Textile sector to focus on recycling and digitization.
He said if the industry focuses on innovation, sustainability, digitisation, newer products and utilisation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), it can grow fast and compete with the best in the world.
Speaking on sustainability, Shri Goyal said that textiles sector can reduce the pressure on the environment by using reusable resources as well as reduce its own production costs.
Shri Piyush Goyal said that digitisation is another area which can help optimise the entire value chain in the sector. He expressed satisfaction at the fact that the industry captains are talking about digitisation.
In current era of information technology, every industry is benefitting from new technologies like blockchain and more.He suggested that the industry should think about high quality products and elementary products like zip and embellishments, which the Indian textile industry imports at present.
T. Rajkumar, chairman of the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) in his welcome address said that the global textile industry is witnessing a reshuffle of the entire supply chain including the countries from which apparel is sourced.
Terms like ‘China Plus One’, re-shoring, onshoring, etc are being commonly heard in interactions across the textile value chain. He said that the value of global textile and apparel exports stood at $828 billion in 2021, registering a growth of 8 per cent over $770 billion in the previous year.
The share of textile, apparel and handicrafts in India’s total exports was 10.62 per cent in 2021-22. In addition to being the largest producer of cotton and jute, India is the second largest producer of silk.
The technical textiles segment too has an estimated 9-11 per cent share in the global market.