New Delhi, Oct 25 (Agency) Adding an edge to India’s quest for bigger textile markets and higher productivity, Piyush Goyal, Minister for Commerce and Industry, Textiles and Consumer Affairs, on Sunday, said that seven locations will be identified soon to encourage the textile machinery manufacturing industry and prepare a common infrastructure for plug and play. In a virtual interaction with textile machinery manufacturers, Goyal called upon the textile industry to get into innovative partnerships and deploy speed, skill and scale to create 100 world class Indian textile machinery champions.
“India should be looking to become a global player in textiles machinery,” Goyal said, drawing attention to the Government’s National Capital Goods Policy for the manufacturing sector which is aimed at increasing the production of capital goods from the 2014-15 value of USD 31 bn to USD 101 bn by 2025. Goyal also came out strongly in favour of a modern and upgraded textile machinery ecosystem in India which would set the momentum for continuous advancement and innovation as well as enhancement of competitive capabilities along the value chain. The Government has set an “aspirational” target of USD 100 bn for textiles and garment exports over the next five years and called on industry to take advantage of a global market shift where China is pruning its market share in the labour-intensive segment. Goyal called upon manufacturers to abandon the command-and-control mindset and adopt the plug-and-play mode to make the textile sector vibrant in name and spirit.
“It would be the right time for India to aspire to a global producer of textiles machinery with the scale, quality and quantity in the kind of machinery the world requires, Goyal said, pointing out that while India is not averse to imports, there was need to reduce import dependency of the textile machinery in India by concerted effort between the textile engineering industry and the Government. A CII-AT Kearney report on creating a competitive advantage for India in the global textile and apparel industry, has also underlined the need for increasing adoption of digitization and machinery modernization as a potential game changer and an imperitive for the Indian textiles industry right now. Inefficiencies caused by the deployment of old inefficient machines results in India lagging leaders such as China in the adoption of modern machinery, the report points out. For example, power looms, which make up 60 % of fabric production, largely use shuttle looms rather than modern air-jet or rapier looms — in stark contrast to China, where 70 to 80 % of looms are modern looms (shuttle-less looms). The report cites high cost of capital and high reliance on imports for almost all textiles machinery as a hindrance in earning the right return on invested capital, especially given India’s slight cost disadvantage. It recommends that India should reduce the cost of investments by either exploring lower duties on textile machinery or promoting indigenous textile manufacturing.