India: Textile industry confident
It is a mystery why India's textile industry slept when rival China was working overtime to capture the world market in the post-quota regime, but the domestic industry is confident of making up for lost time. After textile quotas were abolished at the beginning of 2005, Indian exports instead of looking up, dipped…
Egytex News Desk
Egytex
Over a year later, the industry feels it is ready to clothe the world.
"When WTO quotas were over, there was a transitional period. International market took as much time as us to realise the change. They were closing down their textile industries in EU," Nahar Industrial Enterprises Limited (NIEL) vice chairman and managing director, Kamal Oswal said.
NIEL is part of the Rs 2,000 crore Nahar Group that owns garment brands like Oswal, Monte Carlo and Canterbury.
He also discounted China's lead position in the market, saying Beijing was not a competitor in the real sense, as it catered to a different segment and had different products.
"We are not competing with China because they make basic product. We are concentrating on value added products. Our target customers are different from China," said Oswal.
According to industry estimates, India is expected to double its share in world textile trade from four per cent currently to eight per cent by FY'08 and is targeting $50 bn exports by fiscal 2009-10.
India's textile exports in 2004-05 was worth $13 bn.
Source: The Economic Times
From the Egytex news archive, first published on 17 April 2006. Figures and names are as reported at the time.
