Al Alam Al Youm, p.10, (28/4/2007)
The equation of the success of India in the field of exporting textiles estimated at $ 17 billion in one year
By: Mohammad El Sayed Darwish
The Textiles and Yarn Industry Support Fund prepared a detailed report on the Indian experience in the field of textile industry and how India became the first competitor to China in this field on the global level.
Details of the factors of success of the Indian experience include the following:
The necessity of the presence of institutional framework
Modernizing and development does not entail ignoring the traditional crafts
The small scale textile enterprises could play a role in solving the problem of unemployment.
Availability of raw materials helps in developing industries.
Making the value added items on top of the exports.
Giving competitive edge to textiles exported to the US and Europe.
Developing and restructuring textile units and making all data available to foreign investors.
Giving importance to human resources through training them and increasing their efficiency.
The report said that the textile sector plays a pivotal role in the economic and social development of India. Its production represents 4% of the GDP in 2004 and 17% of the exports in 2005/2006.
This sector has 35 million workers which represents 10% of the labor power in India. It is second the largest sector in terms of numbers of workers after the agricultural sector.
In 1985 India established a ministry for textile industries. It is in charge of setting up planning policies and promotion of exports. It also coordinates the activities of textile research centers and supports them financially.
Figures refer to the fact that 71.4% of the production of the textile sector is cotton textiles, 17.2% blended yarn, and 11.4 synthetic yarn.
India ranks second in the field of natural silk production with an annual production of 1.8 million tons in 2005/2006. 4 million rural families are working in this field.
An independent authority was established called the cotton textile holding company. It was established to study the status of state-owned companies and modernizing them. It is in charge of 52 factories affiliated to 9 companies.
India's share of world textile exports is 4% and 2.9% of the clothes. Textile sector in India is one of the largest textile sectors worldwide. This is due mainly to the availability of raw materials.
If we study India's exports to the EU we will find out that they reached 802.5 tons estimated at $ 6523 million in 2005. India had a 9% market share of the textiles in the EU markets in 2005. Yet, the Indian textile exports to the EU went down due to adding ten East European countries to the union plus the anti-dumping sanctions imposed by the EU on some of the Indian textile products.
It is evident that the ton of Indian textile products is cheaper than the Chinese one. The price gap shrank to amount to $ 500 in 2005. The average price of the ton of Indian textiles to the EU reached $ 4.2 thousand, while the Chinese ton reached $ 4.7 thousand.
In spite of the relative increase of the price of the Chinese ton of garments compared to the Indian one, yet since 2001, the average price of Chinese garment ton went down to be $ 13,000 in 2005 compared to $18.9 thousand for India.
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