The Ministry of Textiles has said that the roadmap and actions taken in the past 100 days will be highly significant for the future of the Indian textile industry.
Addressing a press conference in Delhi, Giriraj Singh on ‘100 days Achievements of Ministry of Textiles’ said that in the past 3 months, the Government has been very proactive and focused on all segments of the textile industry.
This includes launching ‘Paridhi 24×25’ – a bilingual web portal of VisioNxt and the AI Taxonomy e-book to offer India’s own trend forecasting services, sanctioning of 156 research projects including for the development of carbon fibres and other specialty fibres and launching 11 start-ups under the National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM) during the conference.
“Work for PM Mega Integrated Textile Regions and Apparel (PM MITRA) parks is in full swing and just a few days back Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of one such park at Amravati in Maharashtra,” he said.
In his view, the sector will advance and draw stakeholders from over 100 nations to the next Bharat Tex event, the planning for which has been done in the previous three months.
Apparel Resources questioned the Minister why India’s garment exports had been flat for the past seven years and whether they would increase further.
“The industry is prioritising domestic garment demand and is seeing strong growth in this category. Because there are several prospects in the Indian domestic market, it is natural for businesses to prioritise catering to the Indian market,” he said.
Apparel Resources also asked why, except for Epic Group and Youngone Group, none of the major global textile manufacturing behemoths had invested in India, but did not get a response.
He further added that it is not that the Indian apparel industry is not growing. India has imported 1.5 crore sewing machines in the last decade and some of that goes into replacing older machines, but this number shows that apparel manufacturers are growing.
Answering another question on Bangladesh’s recent development and now its impact on the Indian industry, the Minister said that India will grow with its own strength rather than the turmoil of any other apparel manufacturing hub.
The press conference also highlighted a number of initiatives implemented to increase silk production and to support the handicraft and handloom industries at the local level.
Minister of State for Textiles Pabitra Margherita, Senior officials of the ministry Rachna Shah, Rohit Kansal and Rajiv Saxena were also present on this occasion.
