Leading industry body Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) has urged the industry to focus more aggressively on US market.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Chinese share in US apparels had started declining since 2018. In particular, last year (2019) witnessed around 20,000 crore market share loss for China in the apparel segment alone.
Now, post Covid, there’s acceleration in this declining trend.
Prabhu Dhamodharan, Convenor, ITF, says that due to COVID-19 implications, the overall US apparel imports dropped by 30 per cent in the first 7 months of 2020, while their import of Chinese apparels dropped by 49 per cent.
Moreover, the news about recent US actions in terms of trade restrictions on Chinese apparel and other products from one of the major textile regions – Xinjiang – leads to a notion that it will accelerate the trend further.
Altogether, this trend may create a US $ 10 billion opportunity in US markets in apparel segment alone for other countries including India.
“The Indian apparel clusters should take advantage of the situation and aggressively focus on US markets,” he added.
After the EU-Vietnam FTA, Vietnam’s duty-free access may create further pressure on India’s apparel exports to EU. However, India’s competing nations like Vietnam and Bangladesh have a level playing field in US because all of these countries do not have an FTA with the US as of now. So, it’s right time to step up efforts with US markets as a market diversification strategy.
“Many of our clusters in Tamil Nadu have demonstrated high level of quality, consistency, on-time delivery, best sustainable practices, green manufacturing practices, empowerment of rural workforce. Now it’s time for Tamil Nadu textile clusters to form an alliance, project their strengths and market it well to establish a strong Tamil Nadu textile sector and US partnership as an alternative to China in apparel sector,” says Prabhu.
