Cotton yarn exports touched $4.5 billion, and cotton fabric $2.13 billion during 2013-14. Cotton home textiles achieved exports of $4.79 billion, according to TEXPROCIL (Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council.) This was disclosed at a recent TEXPROCIL press conference held in Mumbai.
According the reckonings of TEXPROCIL, Indian yarn and made-up exports were impacted due to the following reasons:
- Indian cotton prices remained higher than international cotton prices since February. With cotton prices higher than international prices 70 per cent of its sale value of yarn is cotton cost it is extremely difficult even for the highly efficient spinning sector to export its products.
- Home textiles exports got impacted as India´s main competitor, Pakistan, in the EU main market gained zero duty access, against 9.6 per cent customs duty for products from India.
TEXPROCIL´s recommendations to ensure growth in exports as targeted at $13.5 billion are:
- Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) which is a well staffed cotton procurement and sales organisation , which at present does support price operations must be mandated to use its reach and procure cotton during periods when Indian cotton is available cheaper than International prices and off load it at regular intervals whenever there is a threat of cotton prices breaching the international prices to Mills.
- In order to overcome the external barriers and restore a semblance of level playing field, the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) should address the issues appropriately.
Foreign Trade Policy has four broad objectives:
- Maximise India´s forex earnings for a given incentive outflow
- Create maximum number of jobs for a given incentive outflow
- Incentivise exports of products/commodities that has head room to grow ,
- incentives should increase exports and not merely add to the bottom line of exporters.