Figures suggesting that textiles exports are up again: Piyush Goyal

File photo of Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. Mr. Goyal on March 11, 2023, said textile exports may be growing.
| Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K

The country’s textiles exports have started showing signs of growth after getting impacted due to issues like problems of foreign exchange in many countries and large inventories due to the Russia-Ukraine war, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on March 11.

The textiles minister also expressed hope that exports of cotton and yarn would start reigniting from April.

“Textiles exports have a twin problem. Many countries are facing foreign exchange problems post-Ukraine conflict, due to which many destinations have cut down non-essential imports,” he told reporters here.

Citing an example, he said an Indian consignment of 100 containers to Egypt came back as the African nation did not have foreign exchange to pay for it.

Many countries are not accepting non-essential goods from outside their territory, he added.

Another reason was that, he said, post-COVID there was a lot of pent-up demands, people were purchasing in large quantities of products like textiles and gems and jewelery.

But soon after the Ukraine conflict, inflation went up by leaps and bounds and due to the growing inflation and the stress in economies and “we saw” inventories getting piled up and people slowed down their procurements, he said.

“I have been engaged with export promotion councils regularly and the latest information is that most of the inventories are now consumed, economies are starting to get back into shape. I think the world has kind of learnt to live with the challenges and crisis…and the figures also seem to suggest that the exports are up again,” Mr. Goyal told reporters here.

He was replying to a question about the reason behind dip in textiles exports.

On dip in cotton and yarn exports, he explained that the outbound shipments were “all-time high” last year due to inflation.

This year due to the international problems, prices are “quite suppressed” and because of that there was a dip in exports of cotton and yarn.

“We hope to see that also reigniting from April 1,” he added.

Ready-made garments of all textiles dipped by about 3.5% in January to $1.5 billion. However, during April-January this fiscal, it rose by 5.22% to $13.4 billion.

Exports of cotton yarn, fabrics, made-ups and handloom products dipped by 28.7% to $9 billion during April-January this fiscal.

Further, he said that textiles exports from Bangladesh get customs duty concessions in the developed markets as it is a least developed country.

Now India is following the path of free trade agreements to get duty concessions for its textiles industry, which would help in boosting exports, the Minister said.