India’s textile, apparel exports jump 11% in July

Exports of textiles and apparel from India have increased by 11 per cent in July 2018 to Rs 19,636 crore compared to exports of Rs 17,692 crore in the same period of last year, the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) has said quoting data from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S), under the ministry of commerce.

Segment-wise, textiles exports increased by 15 per cent to Rs 10,879 crore in July 2018 over Rs 9,429 crore in the same month of the previous year. Apparel exports grew 6 per cent to Rs 8,757 crore from Rs 8,263 crore in July 2017, the data showed.

“With continuous support from the Government with a slew of measures on all fronts there has been increase in exports of textiles and apparel from India,” said CITI chairman Sanjay K Jain. He added that overall growth in exports during Apr-July 2018 has been 3 per cent vis-à-vis same period last year.

Further, the MMF segment, which is expected to be the growth driver of the industry in the coming years has seen increase in production. While the imports of textile and clothing have increased from $1.78 billion in April-June 2017 to $1.87 billion in the same period this year, an increase of 5 per cent, which is significantly lower than the growth of 16 per cent last year.

“The measures taken by the Government to increase the import duty on various textile and apparel items will help in further reducing the imports in coming months,” said Jain in a CITI press release.

He also highlighted that as per RBI Financial Stability Report-June 2018, the stressed advance ratio of textile subsector has also improved from 23.7 per cent in September 2017 to 22.3 per cent in March 2018, indicating signs of recovery.

“The continuous support from the Government is expected to put the industry back on track and we anticipate the textile and apparel exports to grow by 7 per cent while imports to stay flat in fiscal 2018-19,” said Jain.