Indian textile industry is asking for separate HS code for many products and now this demand seems to be fulfil as Indian Technical Textiles Association (ITTA) has approached the Government for classification of the products and a committee has been formed to identify the products to give HS (Harmonised System) code and expects that it will soon be classified by getting the same. The technical textiles industry has been facing serious problems, including litigation. Post classification, companies can concentrate on these products with more focus.
Read more on India’s role in global technical textile market– India and China set to play major role as consumers and exporters of finished technical textile products
Addressing conference on ‘Technical Textiles – the Enormous Emerging Opportunity’ ITTA Chairman Pramod Kumar Khosla said that since there are nearly 750 companies engaged in technical textile manufacturing in India and the sector expected to reach a market size of Rs. 1,58,540 crore by 2016-17, ITTA has also sought rationalisation of duties on the specialty fibre. He also insisted that with availability of manpower and presence of sectors such as automobiles, which are potential customers, south India has huge potential for investments in technical textiles. Every car requires at least 7 kg of technical textiles and there is tremendous potential in the automobile sector, nearly 1.5 million soldiers, and the requirement of defence force was huge since they need materials for trenches, apart from covers for tanks, planes and missiles.
He has also demanded Tamil Nadu State Government to come out with a separate policy for the sector as in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Since there are 12 categories of the sector, such as agri-tech, geo-tech, build-tech and cloth-tech, there is a need to have separate policy for the groups. In India, the technical textiles sector is seeing steady growth and it is between 12 per cent and 15 per cent depending on the segment. The market size is expected to be Rs. 1,50,000 crore in the next two years. The global market value for technical textiles is estimated to be 144 billion dollars in 2014 and it is expected to be 200 billion dollars by 2020. The compounded annual growth rate is 5.8 per cent. Woven, non-woven and knitting technologies have thrown open huge opportunities.
