The Indian apparel industry has urged the immediate commencement of the Rupee-Rouble trade mechanism with Russia.
Exporters trading with Russia have not received the payment, which got stuck due to the sanctions imposed by the US and western countries. Consequently, the MSMEs are facing the operational difficulties, in addition to challenges of sustaining in the business.
“The MSME units in Tirupur have been exporting knitwear garments to Russia and receiving payment in Euro/Dollar currency; however, the same has now been totally stopped as a part of the sanctions, further to exclusion of Russian Banks from the SWIFT platform. Though the buyers are willing to make the payment, they are not able to due to the impact of sanctions, resulting in non-availability of options,” said Raja M Shanmugham, President, Tirupur Knitwear.
TEA has urged Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister of Finance, and Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Textile and Commerce for their intervention to immediately commence Rupee-Rouble trade mechanism with Russia to receive back exports proceeds, which will not only help MSMEs at this hour of crisis, but also help to push exports.
From April 2021 to February 2022, India has exported apparels worth US $ 61 million.
