Surging cotton exports to China in the wake of rupee appreciation and high interest rates is posing a new challenge to the Indian textiles industry.
The industry fears that 75% of an estimated production of 31 million cotton bales in this cotton year (October-September) will reach India’s textiles rival China.
?We have increased the area under quality cotton cultivation, but it’s not helping because most of it is being exported to China. This is posing a big challenge to the Indian textiles industry in the international market vis-?-vis Indian raw material strength,? industry sources said. Owing to this situation, middlemen are making hay, leaving cotton farmers hardpressed for revenue.
?The industry will take up the matter with commerce and finance ministries soon and request them to ensure that the best quality cotton of India is made available to the textiles industry of the country and not to its strong competitors like China and other Asian nations”, the secretary general of the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), DK Nair told FE.
He also said China finds it difficult to allot more land for cotton cultivation because of the pressure for food production. As a result they are likely to import 65 lakh bales of cotton this year, a whopping increase of 15 lakh bales when compared with last year. The same problem is also evident in the fibre sector. As a result of huge export Indian textile industries are deprived of the benefit of the rich raw material storage of the country.
To add to the woe, while China is contributing 31 % of the global apparel production and that too is expected to rise to 48 % by 2010, Indian contribution is merely 3%.
