Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said that Japanese textile companies, including Uniqlo — one of the largest in the world — would step up sourcing input material from India and would also increase investment in India to export textile goods across the globe from the country.
India is also expected to get major concessions from FTA partners including the US, EU, UK and Canada.
“My meetings with some of the largest importers and marketing companies of textiles give me the confidence that we will see a larger presence in India, both as investment to expand their business in India and to source from India for Japan and for the roughly 4,000 stores [across the world ] which one company has with 4 trillion yen turnover, Uniqlo,” Goyal said while responding to a question on whether Japan will lower non-tariff barriers on Indian textile exports.
Goyal said that businesses in Japan and in India are both very much committed to working together and there is a lot of interest on both sides for technology transfer, for making India a manufacturing base for the world, along with a large Indian domestic market.
The minister said that both sides are committed to new technologies, adding that India and Japan have discussed semiconductors and the entire ecosystem, especially chemicals, gases, equipment, raw materials, design, manufacturing, packaging, shipbuilding, ship breaking, and ship repair.
“We have also had discussions on the textile sector also. We earlier had an experience that the textile industry was not able to crack the Japanese requirements. Sizes are different; they are so used to the US and Europe. Japanese materials, sizes and styles are different. I suspect that the Indian industry did not take as much interest as they should have. Two delegations of the apparel export promotion council, now they are showing interest in understanding the Japanese requirements,” Goyal said.
Japan is the fourth largest garment importer in the world after the US, Germany and France.
As per the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), out of Japan’s total garment imports worth $23 billion, India’s share is just one per cent. India has been pushing to step up quality and scale in textile production with schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel (PM MITRA) to support the textile industry’s growth and development.
