Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are highly significant for textile and apparel industry. India has signed 13 FTAs in the last five years including the India-Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Corporation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA), India-UAE Comprehensive Partnership Agreement, and India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement. Several more FTAs in the recent past and are in process to do the same with countries like UK, Canada etc.
Keeping this in mind, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) has has partnered with Lakshikumaran and Sridharan, law firm specialists in Customs and International Trade, for a series of webinars to look into the various provisions and opportunities that the FTAs offer and how to leverage them.
CITI will organise various webinars of different aspects of FTAs. The first webinar in this series Utilizing Free Trade Agreements to Grow Export Opportunities covered the framework of the FTA’s especially with regard to rules of origin and tariff/non-tariff notifications that the units should look into before they take a decision on importing from or exporting to an FTA country.
T Rajkumar, Chairman, CITI opined that there is a concern that the industry has not been able to leverage FTA’s and hence there is a need to sensitise the industry on this issue and have more stakeholder discussions on how to leverage the FTAs, especially for the textile and apparel sector as India has immense potential to capture a major market share in these countries.
It can be mentioned here that India signed a CEPA with Korea in 2010. Since last 10 years Korea’s T&A imports from the world have increased at a CAGR of 4 per cent to reach US $ 18.8 billion in 2022 while from India, it has increased at a CAGR of just 0.2 per cent to reach US $ 0.37 billion. Moreover, India’s share in Korea has been hovering in a range of 2-3 per cent during the last 10 years starting from 2013.
Almost similar is the example of Japan as well.
It was highlighted that the industry should align itself with the partner country, be it supply chain management, institutional partnership. The industry must be at the forefront of adhering to the compliance and sustainability requirements of the FTA countries besides maintaining global quality standards, astute business models, and competitive pricing.
