The knitwear capital of India Tirupur has its pre-budget wish-list all set and demands for adequate infrastructure, R&D centre and incubation centre to empower textile clusters with world-class industry infrastructure facilities.
Presently clusters like Tirupur are focused more on basic style garments and there is a dire need to move up the value chain by directing its focus towards niche segments. There is scope to expand its product range to include technical textiles, sportswear, protective textiles, fire retardant wear, anti-microbial medical wear, thermal insulated wear etc.
In a pre-budget memorandum submitted to Finance Ministry, Tirupur Exporters Association said (TEA), “World class Design Studio, Research and Development Centre and incubation centre for technical textiles will facilitate rapid growth of not only the existing textile business but also enable foray into niche segments creating quantum growth opportunities to the industry.”
Government of India has chosen apparel manufacturing as one of the focus areas because of its potential to generate huge employment opportunities and is focusing on growing the industry exports value three fold. Keeping this in mind, and the MSME dominant nature of the sector, exporters also demand an increase in incentives along with a decrease in taxes and interest rates.
“Excise Duty should be reduced. Duty Drawback for the export trade should be increased. In India, the duty drawback was 27 per cent in earlier days. At that time the growth of export trade was in greater level. Now it is 7 per cent and the increase in this aspect by government is very meager (i.e. 0.50 per cent to 1 per cent) which is truly not enough. So we expect an increase that is double the percentage prevailing now”, said Tirupur Exporters and Manufacturers Association President M P Muthurathinam
“The slender margins in which the textile industry is operating, for this the entire textile sector should be placed in the lowest slab of the GST so that industry can absorb the levy without any significant impact on the business”, said Tirupur Exporters’ Association President Raja M Shanmugham.
Tirupur is contributing about 46% of total knitwear exports from our country and is exporting only cotton based garments. The knitwear exports from the city have grown up by leaps and bounds, from less than Rs.10 crore in 1984 to Rs. 23,000 crore in 2015-16. Tirupur is providing employment to six lakh workers directly and two lakh workers indirectly, mostly migrant workers from other states.
“We are insisting the government to establish Apparel Designing and Manufacturing Training Centers for labourers with hostel facilities. From these centers they are trained and become skilled persons. Government should open these training centers in all rural and urban areas to bring and develop skilled labor into this sector”, said Muthurathinam.
Apart from these, the knitwear capital also seeks a focused and dedicated agency similar to Silk Board or Coir Board to be formed specifically for Knitwear sector which can serve as a catalyst for rapid growth of this industry segment.
Among many initiatives in 2016, the Indian government announced an Rs 6,006 crore special package for the apparel sector and amended the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS). However, the Textiles Ministry is yet to announce the much awaited National Textiles Policy, which is expected to boost prospects of the textile and apparel sector. Textiles Ministry is yet to announce the much awaited National Textiles Policy, which is expected to boost prospects of the textile and apparel sector.
