The market for home textile worldwide is likely to show remarkable growth in the years to come especially in North America and Europe that collectively are the biggest consumers constituting 60 per cent of the global home textiles imports.
India – a leading home textile exporter in the world – shipped over US $ 7 billion worth of made-ups in 2021, 50 per cent of which (US $ 3.46 billion) went to the US market.
On the other hand, India shipped US $ 323 million (up 30.81 per cent on Y-o-Y) worth of made-ups/home textile products to UK in 2021, the second highest export value of India after USA.
One can clearly see the gap in export revenues between top two export destinations and this gap can be filled if FTA with UK takes place – the talks of which are already on table.
USA is believed to be a not-to-lose market for India after the dominance shown in last couple of years; however, as industry stakeholders do project, the special trade agreements with UK, Middle East and Australia shall help in growth in these geographies too.
The Ministry of Textiles (MoT) is keen to get made-ups/home furnishing (and apparels too) included in the early harvest programme being worked out between India and the UK as a precursor to a full-fledged Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
It is pertinent to mention here that apparel exporters of Bangladesh, Vietnam and Pakistan have a tariff advantage of about 10-11 per cent because of the special schemes they qualify for. If India and the UK agree on tariff cuts, it would increase the competitiveness of Indian home textile exporters tremendously.
