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Textile and apparel exports contracted 13.9 % in 2022-2023 compared with the previous year. At $41.3 billion exports in 2021-2022, textiles and apparel constituted 9.79% of total goods exports. However, in 2022-2023, the segment recorded exports of $35.5 billion and constituted just 7.95% of goods exports. While apparel exports grew 1.1% last financial year ($16.1 billion) compared with the previous year ($16.01 billion), textile exports shrank 23.3% to $ 19.3 billion last fiscal. Meanwhile import of yarn, fabrics and made-ups rose 26.7%. According to Siddhartha Rajagopal, executive director of Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council, “It was an exceptional (bad) year for cotton textiles. However, in March 2023, cotton textile exports crossed $1 billion, which is giving hope. It is an encouraging sign and the hope [is that] the momentum will be maintained.”
High inventory Mr. Rajagopal said a couple of factors that affected exports this year were the huge inventory that was with the international buyers and the high cotton prices in India last year. The inventory with buyers had affected orders to countries such as Bangladesh too. Now, the buyers are resuming sourcing for their needs, he said. Industry sources here added that there should be a stable raw material policy - be it for cotton or manmade fibres. There should not be any restriction on raw materials, they said. Naren Goenka, chairman of Apparel Export Promotion Council, said in a press release that India had ramped up its global apparel exports in 2022-2023 despite the RussiaUkraine war, sluggish demand in major garment importing countries, stiff competition by other major apparel manufacturing countries, and volatility in raw material prices in the beginning of the year.
Source: The Hindu
Brandix India Apparel City Private Ltd (BIAC), one of the largest dedicated apparel and textile manufacturing parks in Asia, has been conferred Platinum Award at the prestigious ‘Apex India Green Leaf Award for Sustainability’ for the year 2022. BIAC was awarded for its outstanding achievements and initiatives undertaken in the field of environmental sustainability. Rasika Kodithuwakku, Head of Engineering and Dr Mohini Rani Sabhavath, Sustainability Environmental Engineer received the award from Poonam Dhillon, Indian Actress & Politician, retired Major General PK Saighal, Defence Expert of India & TEDx Speaker & Kuldeep Singh, Apex India Foundation President BIAC has been contributing towards a sustainable future. It is a zero-landfill apparel park and the first industry in the state to have installed a Solar Sludge Drying Process unit that avoids landfill waste. Also, the Park has been harvesting rainwater to meet 30 per cent of the Park's annual water usage sustainably.
Source: Bizz buzz
The pattern and weave that originated in Tamil Nadu has a long history, often intersecting with stories of trade and colonialism. Commercialisation has widened the gap between weaver and consumer and glossed over the State’s vibrant textile historyEagle-eyed textile and fashion enthusiasts might have noticed that Tamil Nadu was represented at the Dior show in Mumbai in March this year. A model walked the runway wearing a dress featuring the famous Madras checks, a design that most of us would have seen and probably own either as a handkerchief or clothes. Each pattern and weave that originated in Tamil Nadu has a long and interesting history, often intersecting with stories of trade and colonialism. Commercialisation of these textiles has widened the gap between weaver and consumer and a glossing over of the State’s vibrant textile history.
Source: The Hindu
The textile sector, one of the oldest industries in the country, still continues to be critical for the sustainability of the Indian economy. Contributing about 2% to India’s GDP, the labour-intensive sector, is the second largest employer in the country after agriculture. India is also a major exporter of textiles, accounting for 8–9% of total exports. However, given the Covid-19 scenario and the ongoing issues in the global market, domestic production has turned sluggish. There are many issues that the government must tackle, such as the move away from cotton by the Western market, LDCS grabbing a greater chunk of the global share, and the harsh environmental and quality standards being imposed by the West. In this episode, businessline’s Amiti Sen talks to Ajay Sahai, Director General and CEO, the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), to understand the changing dynamics of the Indian textile industry. Listen in! (Host: Amiti Sen, Producer: Nabodita Ganguly)
Source: The Hindu Businessline
The department of telecommunications (DoT) has given its go-ahead to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) proposal to assign a different series of phone numbers to companies for service-related commercial calls, which are not for promotional purposes. The aim is to help subscribers distinguish between genuine commercial calls and promotional ones. At present, amid an increase in spam and fraudulent calls, subscribers refrain from taking calls even from their banks, which may be for service-related information or assistance, or from product servicing companies. The phone number series will be issued to principal entities (businesses like banks) based on their requirement, for which Trai will soon come up with guidelines, officials said. The new series will work as an identifier for them and will be displayed on phone screens at the time of the call. Currently, the ‘140’ number series has been issued to telemarketing companies, but there’s no distinction between firms delivering services and making a sales pitch for pure commercial purposes. Meanwhile, Trai has given more time to telecom operators and principal entities to implement its earlier directions to stop misuse of headers and message templates. The regulator has not made any formal announcement in this regard, but the compliance will take at least two to three weeks, officials said. Thy said it is an ongoing process and the regulator will conduct another meeting with telcos next week to check on the progress. In February, Trai directed telcos to block all unverified and unused headers and templates within 30 days and 60 days, respectively. Based on the order, the deadline to comply with the directions for telcos is April 16. However, banking and financial institutions, which constitute the majority of the spam and fraudulent messages, have delayed complying with the directions. The delay on their part was because fiscal year closure related business. They had sought time till April-end. Telcos only own the network and promotional messages are sent by enterprises through telemarketers. Last month, Trai asked the telcos to expedite the implementation on the directions from principal entities or enterprises for removing their unused message templates and headers. Telecom operators had informed Trai that only 7-8% of the principal entities have complied with the directions on cleaning of headers, templates and removal of those templates not in use. With regard to curbing the pesky calls, 10-digit numbers have been difficult to tackle. Vodafone Idea recently presented its regulatory sandbox which it had developed with Tanla Platforms to Trai. The system uses an algorithm to block fraudulent or spam calls. Based on this, Trai is also expected to issue a standard process framework in the next two weeks that will detail the regulations around the same for all telcos. “Every telco is free to implement their own sandbox based on the principles and guidelines suggested by Trai. This will come after the pilot project is completed,” Trai chairman PD Vaghela had said last month. According to a survey by community social media platform LocalCircles, nine in 10 subscribers complain of getting pesky or unwanted calls for brand promotion or sales despite registering for the Do Not Disturb (DND) service of their respective operator. The report said the DND service is ineffective in the sense that the unwanted calls come from personal mobile numbers and not landline or commercial numbers of a particular brand, bypassing the DND system.
Source: Financial Express
Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution and Textiles, Shri Piyush Goyal met H.E. Mr. Adolfo Urso, Minister for Enterprises and Made in Italy, Government of Italy in Rome yesterday and discussed the range of issues of mutual interest. Shri Goyal was accompanied by senior officials and a high-level business delegation led by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), while Minister Urso was accompanied by his Deputy Minister Valentino Valentini and other senior officials. Both ministers highlighted the elevation of bilateral relations to strategic partnership during the recent visit of the Prime Minister of Italy, Ms. Giorgia Meloni to India. Shri Goyal highlighted India’s inspirational growth story comprising youth power, digitization, and financial inclusion of 140 billion population with aspirations. He also underscored India’s achievement in clean energy to deal with climate change impact and emphasised that India has achieved 40% of its installed capacity of energy from renewable in 2021 and set an ambitious goal of generation of 500 GW by 2030. He mentioned that the Government of India under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi launched the Make in India initiative to make India a manufacturing hub for quality products having zero effect and zero defect. He expressed that India aspires to grow manifold from the present USD 3.5 trillion economy to become a developed country in the next 25 years by 2047. Shri Goyal also briefed Minister Urso about India’s capital investment of USD 1.4 trillion under the national infrastructure pipeline to build world-class infrastructure. Both ministers acknowledged the complementarities and synergies between Make in India and Made in Italy initiatives and encouraged business communities of India and Italy to invest in each other's market and exchange on technology and innovation. Minister Urso said that both countries should strive to forge partnerships in space, defence, IT, energy and agriculture. He said that India and the EU should have a fair, equitable, and free trade agreement. Shri Goyal extended an invitation to Minister Urso to visit India. A Business delegation led by CII also met Minister Urso and his colleagues, and had a fruitful interaction. Both Ministers emphasized on more collaboration and cooperation to tap the huge potential in two large economies. In the evening, Shri Goyal met the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, Government of Italy, H.E. Mr. Matteo Salvini. Both sides highlighted the need to promote investments in the field of sustainable mobility. Shri Goyal pitched for enhancing Italian investments in the fields of dedicated freight corridors, ports, airports, and high-speed railway lines while underscoring the Government of India’s flagship initiatives - PM GatiShakti and National Infrastructure Pipeline. He mentioned about the USD 1.4 trillion outlay kept for building infrastructure in India. On the sustainability issue, Shri Goyal underlined the government's commitment to build its capacity in renewable energy in order to have a more sustainable and low-carbon economy. Deputy PM Salvini expressed a desire to visit India to view massive progress in infrastructure development. He also shared about the flagship project of building the world's longest suspension bridge to connect Sicily with the mainland. Shri Goyal said that culture, cuisine, languages, and films play an important role in boosting people to people contacts and they are the key drivers in promoting the soft power diplomacy between the two countries. During his two day long stay in Rome, Shri Goyal had meetings and interactions with 2 Deputy PMs – Mr Tajani and Mr Salvin, 1 cabinet minister – Mr Urso, 3 Deputy Ministers – Mr Cirielli, Mr Silli and Mr Valentini, Vice President of Italian Senate, Sen. Gaspari, President of India-Italy Friendship Group, Mr Sen Terzi, 8 Parliamentarians and almost hundred Chairmen, MDs, CEOs and Heads of business and trade associations from diverse sectors. Engagements also included one-on-one meetings with Heads and CEOs of 8 top Italian companies.
Source: PIB
The US has emerged as India's biggest trading partner in 2022-23 on account of increasing economic ties between the two countries. According to the provisional data of the commerce ministry, the bilateral trade between India and the US has increased by 7.65 per cent to USD 128.55 in 2022-23 as against USD 119.5 billion in 2021-22. It was USD 80.51 billion in 2020-21. Exports to the US rose by 2.81 per cent to USD 78.31 billion in 2022-23 as against USD 76.18 billion in 2021-22, while imports grew by about 16 per cent to USD 50.24 billion, the data showed. On the other hand, during 2022-23, India's two-way commerce with China declined by about 1.5 per cent to USD 113.83 billion as against USD 115.42 billion in 2021-22. Experts believe that the trend of increasing bilateral trade with the US will continue in the coming years also as New Delhi and Washington are engaged in further strengthening the economic ties. Federation ofIndian Export Organisations (FIEO) President A Sakthivel said that increasing exports of goods such as pharmaceutical, engineering and gems and jewellery is helping India to push its shipments to America. "The trend of increasing trade with the US will continue in the coming months also," he said. FIEO Vice President Khalid Khan said India is emerging as a trusted trading partner and global firms are reducing their dependence only on China for their supplies and are diversifying business into other countries like India. "The bilateral trade between India and the US will continue to grow as our exporters are getting good orders from that country," Khan said Rakesh Mohan Joshi, Director of the Indian Institute of Plantation Management (IIPM), Bangalore, too said that India provides huge trade opportunities for the US as India is the world's third largest consumer market and the fastest growing market economy. "Major export items from India to the US include petroleum, polished diamonds, pharmaceutical products, jewellery, light oils and petroleum, frozen shrimp, made ups etc. whereas major imports from the US include petroleum, rough diamonds, liquified natural gas, gold, coal, waste and scrap, almonds etc," Joshi said. America is one of the few countries with which India has a trade surplus. In 2022-23, India had a trade surplus of USD 28 billion with the US. The data showed that China was India's top trading partner since 2013-14 till 2017-18 and also in 2020-21. Before China, the UAE was the country's largest trading partner. In 2022-23, the UAE with USD 76.16 billion, was the third largest trading partner of India. It was followed by Saudi Arabia (USD 52.72 billion), and Singapore (USD 35.55 billion).
Source: Economic times
Recently, India defended its minimum support price (MSP) policy for foodgrains at the World Trade Organization (WTO), saying that it not only benefited vulnerable farmers but also furthered global food security, by keeping global prices in check and making foodgrains affordable for least developed countries. Sarthak Ray takes a look at the WTO’s policy on members’ subsidies
What India said at WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), all domestic support in favour of agricultural producers is subject to rules. India told the WTO Agriculture Committee that its public stockholding programme ensured that it didn’t have to import the vast quantities it needed for its food security needs and thereby cause the price of grains to spike—which, in turn, ensured that LDCs didn’t find it too difficult to procure these. It underlined the fact that such stockholding had nothing to do with subsidised exports. India is facing severe criticism at the WTO from nine members, including the US and rice-exporting Thailand, over its stockholding at administered price programme and for using the ‘Bali peace clause’ to protect its rice subsidies. The Agreement on Agriculture The AoA categorises domestic support as Green Box support (no or minimal trade distortive effect, such as R&D support) and Amber Box support (any support that distorts trade) with MSP, in principle, being considered such support. The aggregate monetary value of Amber Box is subject to memberspecific reduction commitments. Green Box measures are exempt from reduction commitments. Developing countries’ public stockholding for food security is treated as Green Box support. Such support must have minimal trade-distorting effect and no specific production-favouring effect. Direct payments to producers that don’t distort production balance (type & volume), certain developmental measures in developing countries and certain direct payments under production-limiting programmes, and de minimis levels of support are exempted from reduction. Bali Peace Clause The AoA’s de minimis norms protect price support in any year, even if it is perceived as trade-distorting, if aggregate value of the product-specific support does not exceed 5% of the total value of production of the product. Non-product specific support less than 5% of the value of total agricultural production is also exempt from reduction. The 5% threshold applies to developed countries whereas for developing countries the de minimis ceiling is 10%. At the 2013 Bali conference, developing and developed nations arrived at a temporary window to protect countries’ food security programmes even if these breached the de minimis rule. The peace clause was to be in force for four years till 2017, by when a permanent solution was to be found. The peace clause comes with exhaustive disclosures requirements including full dislcosure of MSPs and annual procurement operations. Also read: Hot, dry weather plays havoc with Darjeeling fi rst flush tea India’s public stockholding and why it has raised hackles of some members Nine major grain exporters challenged India’s public stockholding in March this year. India has invoked the Bali Peace Clause many times with respect to its grains procurement and stockholding programme. The countries allege that the heavily subsidised stockholding is affecting food security of other countries. India has argued the reverse, against the backdrop of the shortage of grains because of Russia’s war against Ukraine. It reportedly told the WTO committee that while global exports of rice amounted to 56 million tonne in 2021, those covered by the national food security programme got 58 mt. It has stated that it doesn’t export rice from its economy news Trade Subscribe to FE Daily Newsletter for latest updates on markets, business, money, infra & more, right in your mailbox Enter Your Email Subscribe Get live Share Market updates and latest India News and business news on Financial Express. Download Financial Express App for latest business news. Follow us on First published on: 17-04-2023 at 03:45 IST MSP-led procurement programme—rather, its exports are of premium quality rice. India has also relied on the data from its Open Market Sales Scheme that show that the biggest buyers have been state governments, and not private parties who could be suspected of exporting the grains. India’s accusers, on the other hand, say it has not provided enough disclosures and has no mechanism to check stocks from being exported. India says it will provide certain data once it has compiled it. Along with the G-33 grouping and African nations, India is seeking a permanent solution for public stockholding of foodgrains.
Source: Financial Express
INTERNATIONAL
An exhibition of textile machinery ‘ITME Africa 2023’ will be held from November 30 to December 2 at Kenyatta International Convention Centre, Nairobi. Organised by the India ITME Society, the event will provide technology to the textile industry in Africa and the west Asian countries. “With the growing importance of South-South cooperation, India’s expertise can be leveraged to build textile industry in Africa through the sharing of knowledge and technology. Alongwith promoting trade, investment, creating business friendly environment and vibrant private sector this exhibition would focus on working in partnership with the government, business community and other stakeholders,” said a press release.
Source: The Hindu
Shipment of ‘Made in Bangladesh’ apparel to the USA registered 2.49 per cent growth (US $ 1.46 billion) in January-February of 2023, thanks to a decline in overall demand for apparel on account of the economic slowdown caused by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Media reports underlined this citing data from the US Department of Commerce’s Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA). Meanwhile, speaking to the media, BGMEA President Faruque Hassan maintained Bangladesh’s apparel exports to USA registered minimal growth in January-February of 2023 while underlining global economy was going through turmoil owing to geopolitical reasons even as he opined countries in the west were facing high inflation and high interest rates owing to the war between Russia and Ukraine Interacting with media, apparel exporters in Bangladesh reportedly stated export orders from the US had started going down since September 2022, which was reflected in the data from the OTEXA.
Source: Apparel resources
City and PUMA are excited to announce this season’s RE:FIBRE campaign where we encourage fans to donate their old garments which will be recycled by PUMA to help reduce waste. One way in which fans can recycle garments is by joining us at City Square on Sunday 7 May, before our home game against Leeds United, in a RE:FIBRE Matchday Takeover. Fans who bring their old garments will be in with a chance to win signed Tunnel Club tickets, City goodies and meet club legends Joleon Lescott and Shaun Wright-Phillips who will be collecting donations on the day in person. If you have been to the Manchester City stadium store this season, you may have noticed our take-back bins which will continue to be available for the remainder of the campaign. The rules for the take-back scheme are: We accept all apparel brands Please only return freshly washed garments We accept all types of clothing except for underwear, socks or swimwear Garments can be made of any material To help kick o the campaign, Nathan Ake and Kalvin Phillips battled it out to see who could put on the most PUMA clothing in 90 seconds before donating them to be recycled. As part of PUMA’s latest eorts towards sustainability, they plan to increase their overall usage of recycled polyester (by weight) to 75% by 2025 across PUMA’s Apparel and Accessories products. All RE:FIBRE garments are made of at least 95% of recycled textile waste and other used materials made of polyester. By transforming textile waste and other used materials into new textiles, we can be Forever Better.
Source: Mancity
