Textile policy to be rolled out by mid 2020

Mega parks will help country scale, spurring cost effectiveness: Textiles Secretary

The Central Government is expected to roll out a Textile Policy by the middle of this year, according to Ravi Capoor, Secretary of the Union Ministry of Textiles.

“We are working on a policy. Two rounds of consultatations have been held with the stakeholders. Hopefully by mid-year we should have the new policy,” Mr. Capoor told The Hindu on Thursday.

On the measures to be taken to attract investments in textiles and clothing, he said the need for cost effectiveness is a major challenge.

One factor affecting cost effectiveness is lack of scale. “New industries should look at scale. The Ministry plans to develop 10 mega textile parks. Each one will be an integrated park. We hope to bring some economies of scale with this. India should be a destination for Foreign Direct Investment in textiles. We need good infrastructure for it.” The Ministry is talking to the States and a meeting will be held on Monday too. Any State which has minimum 1,000 acres ready for the park will be supported to develop it, he said.

The Secretary was hopeful of textile and garment exports increasing this financial year compared to last year, when it was roughly $38 billion. Indian exporters are largely cotton based. “We should move to MMF (manmade fibre). If Indian exports in MMF grow to the level of cotton (ie, the share of Indian cotton product exports in global trade) the overall exports will increase by $20-25 billion,” he said.

Another thrust area will be technical textiles. The Cabinet is expected to approve the National Technical Textiles Mission, announced in the Budget, soon. It will be rolled out in a couple of months. “We are going to spend ₹1,000 crore in developing raw materials for technical textiles; research associations will be asked to produce applications for these.”