Govt to soon unveil new National Textile Policy

The government will soon announce the much-awaited new National Textile Policy entailing a “futuristic” strategy and action plan for India to unleash its full potential and become globally competitive in the sector, a top official has said. Addressing the annual general meeting of the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), Textiles Secretary Ravi Capoor said, “Hopefully, in the next month or so, we should be able to announce the new textiles policy. It is a futuristic looking policy.”

The secretary said the government is in the “last stages of finalising the textile policy”, which got delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. It will be unveiled after the final round of consultation between the textiles ministry and the industry players, he added.

At the AGM that took place virtually earlier this week, Capoor also said the government is also working on a Focus Product Scheme, wherein it has analysed the export data of top-40 manmade fibre (MMF) products and found that India has a miniscule share of just 0.7 per cent in the total global market of USD 150 billion.

Similarly, in the top-10 technical textile lines, India just has a share of 0.6 per cent out of the total global market size of USD 100 billion. He also told the industry players that a study done by the government has revealed that by 2030, the share of MMF-based textile and apparel products will reach 80 per cent. The cotton will get reduced to 20 per cent as the global demand is more for MMF based products, he added.

The formulation of the new policy has been under consideration for some time now. In 2016, then textiles minister Santosh Gangwar had said the new policy would envisage creation of additional 35 million jobs.