Our honorable Ms. Smriti Zubin Irani Ji, Minister of Textiles, Information and Broadcasting and Women and Child Development, India from BJP representing Amethi constituency has took many steps to uplift the Textile Industry and has been seen in Conference held for technical textile this year. She is the youngest Minister at the age of 43 from 2016 in India and has launched Apparel Sector Special Package, Support for technical textile, focused on North Eastern Region, introduced Silk Samgra Workshop and Samarth Scheme, created Committee on gender budgeting, made Amendment in POCSO act 2019 and Bhartya Poshan Krishi Kosh. These are the few achievements she achieved since her tenure.
One of the most recent event she bestowed upon was “Technical textile-The future of Indian textile industry” on 27th Jan 2021, which was held on WebEx, a video conferencing platform. It was organized by the IMC, chamber of commerce and industry and was preside by many dignitaries from the textile industry.
It included diginitaries like Mr. Rajeev Podar, chairman IMC; Mr. Puneet Lalbhai, Executive Director, Arvind Ltd; and Mr. Manoj Patodia, Chairman TEXPROCIL. They all spent their valuable time in this conference to discuss the upcoming market of Technical Textile in India and worldwide.
Mr.Podar initiated the conference by stating facts like India is one of the largest producers of textile and apparels and the domestic industry contributes 2% of India’s Total GDP; 7% of industrial output in terms of value; 12% of the country’s Export Earnings and is the second largest employer of the country providing direct employment to nearly 45 million people and approximately 60 million people in allied industry.
He then moved on to the importance and growth of technical textile prior to which India has shown its strength in Traditional textile and natural fibers globally and in recent years, man-made fibers and many more. Technical textile accounts for approximately 13% of India’s total textile and apparel market and only 5-10% is consumed, whereas in the advanced countries it is 30 – 70%. Hence National Technical textile Mission has been setup that aims at an average growth rate of 15 – 20% rate to increase the domestic market.
He put forward that Technical textile in India is estimated to grow at the rate of 12% per annum in order to achieve 20% annual growth in this sector as a need for proactive approach towards expanding the existing market, promote usage of Technical textile, encourage International collaborations, Investment promotions, and increase awareness among the citizens and institutions of the country.
The Key factors to increase this include growing end users in industries like Auto mobile, health care, sports and infrastructure and on-going industrial development; availability of raw material such as cotton, wool, jute and silk along with a strong value chain, low cost labour, power and changing consumer trends.
He highlighted the fact that even in Covid 19 lockdown situation textile industry showed its propensity and turned a tradegy into a beautiful opportunity which shows the ability to innovate and rise to the challenge with limited resources and time. India went to zero PPE kits in March 2020 to 2.5 Lakhs a day in sixty days becoming the second largest manufacturer after China. Today India stands to produce 4.5 lakh PPEs and more than 1.5 crore masks a day.
After Mr. Podar Sir, Mr. Anant Singhania, Chairmen Industry of Trade Committee, IMC- Chambers of Commerce and Industry, took the lead and continued the conference by presenting facts regarding Technical textile and stating the use of Technical textile present even in even the velcro of your shoe; the sportswear used in gym; the wrinkle free clothes we wear; the masks; medicated stems for hearts treatment and so on.
He introduced the idea that Technical textile include clothes which can change according to your mood, temperature, wettability and so on. Technical textile can be divided into GeoTech , Agrotech, MedTech, MobTech, Sportstech and lot more.
Currently we have 2000 textile units in the states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, and West Bengal with a turnover of $16 billion. The Indian global demand in technical textile exportation by 2025 will be increased by 4% comparative to the leading exporting countries like US, China, Germany,Taiwan and South Korea.
Recently Gov of India has approved the PLI scheme- Production Linked Incentives of Rs 1,45,980 crore for ten key sectors including textiles. Launching of the national textile mission from 2020 – increased the use of technical textile in domestic market, allowed India to enter in joint venture with South Korea, lots of research is going on in institutes like CITRA, BITRA, IITs for both sustainable like jute, cotton and man-made fibres.
The sector seems to be really very promising with the Gov. Support and country is leading towards more of innovations due to huge demand and that will make the textile industry as the only exponentially growing industry in the coming days.
With this our special guest Ms. Smriti Irani’s was given the stage to speak her mind and her thoughts regarding the initiative towards the growth of Indian Technical textile.
- It included Observations from 2018 where there was hesitation in the hearts of the people because it was even then dubbed as a sunrise section.
- Current profit is of $256 billion with Indian having only 8% market share.
- In Jan 2019, the ministry ensured 207 adjacent courts for technical textiles industry
- In past two years India has become net exporter in Technical textile
- A trade balance which was a negative in 2018-19 from minus 1565 crore now stands at positive 1768 crore.
- 1100 plus companies manufacture PPEs in our country.
- From two companies who produced N95 masks, India now has 200 companies producing such masks.
- Over 5 lakh PPE kits are manu- factured per day.
- Plus 35 lakhs N95 masks per day. 10 India turned its testing capacity from 2 into 12 by December 2021
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