Budget 2024: India's Textile Industry Expects to Sail Through Challenges and Uncovers Growth Opportunities

By siliconindia  |  Friday, 05 July 2024, 12:33:05 PM IST

Budget 2024: India's Textile Industry Expects to Sail Through Challenges and Uncovers Growth Opportu
India's textile industry stands at the cusp of preparing for Budget 2024 amid a gloomy global environment and considerably promising growth prospect. Ranked as the sixth-largest exporter of textiles and apparel globally, India eyes increasing its textile exports to $600 billion by 2047, up from $44 billion in FY22. Geopolitical tension and shifting consumer behaviors have been some major factors that make earning such targets very difficult.
The continuing war between Russia and Ukraine, the Red Sea crisis, and geopolitical uncertainties have all placed further complications on Indian export businesses by creating global supply chain disruptions and raising freight costs. Even against the backdrop of an uptrend in global textile exports-growing at a CAGR of 3.4% between 2018 and 2022-growth in the exports of India remains sluggish at around 1%, indicative of the need for strategic interventions designed to stimulate this key sector.
Subsequently, the government launched the Production-Linked Incentive for textiles in 2021, in which it pledged to spend Rs 10,683 crore over a five-year period to encourage the production of man-made fibre apparel and fabrics along with technical textiles. With an investment to the tune of Rs 2,119 crore by the short-listed applicants and creation of jobs to the tune of 8,214 units, some headway has been covered, but the impact has been somewhat slower than that expected, bringing demands for refashioning these with extensions.
Industry stakeholders and experts are looking through the Budget 2024 for a further enhanced fund allocation toward micro, small, and medium enterprises in view of their contribution towards 80% of the textile market. The extension of the PLI scheme to garments is also expected to spur domestic manufacturing activity and export competitiveness. Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh, through his statements, has hinted that strategic policy interventions could target USD 50 billion in textile exports.
In addition, the Ministry of Textiles is looking at revitalizing the Scheme for Integrated Textile Parks with the objective of inventing internationally designed standards of new parks. The scheme has so far approved 54 textile parks and intends to increase infrastructures that augment operational efficiencies across the textile value chain.
The captains complain that there is a grave necessity for policy measures that will raise the resilience in supply chains, development of skills and technology, and market diversification. They say that through correct support in policy shadows and strategic investments, the Indian textile industry will survive the current turmoil and make the best of the emerging world opportunities.
The stakeholders remain expectant that the proactive measures from the government in Budget 2024 shall indeed pave the way for a resilient, competitive, and growth-oriented textile sector. Consequently, it is supposed to be an area contributing to a great extent to India's economic recovery and export goals in the coming years.

ON THE DECK

siliconindia