New Delhi: India has improved its ranking to emerge as the second largest textile exporter in the world beating competitors like Italy, Germany and Bangladesh in calender year 2013, with China retaining the top position, according to data released by UN Comtrade.

Currently, India exports textiles worth USD 40.2 billion, while the total global textiles exports stand at USD 772 billion, with India commanding 5.2 percent of the share.
The rise in textiles exports from India is largely attributed to the growth in the apparel and clothing sector as these account for almost 43 percent of the share.
“Despite having slow recovery in our biggest traditional markets — the US and EU, prevailing global slowdown and the sustained cost of inflationary inputs, we made the best possible efforts to reach here”.
“Government’s policy of diversification of market and product base helped us and we ventured into the newer markets, which paid huge dividends,” Apparel Exports Promotion Council (AEPC) Chairman Virender Uppal said.
India has also improved its ranking by two notches in the Apparel exports from from eighth position in 2012 to sixth position in 2013. The country’s Apparel exports stood at USD 15.7 billion in 2013 as against USD 12.9 billion in 2012.
Among the top five global clothing suppliers except for Vietnam, India’s Apparel Exports growth was the highest rising 21.8 percent during 2013. India’s Apparel exports account for 3.7 percent share in the global readymade garment exports.
However, elaborating on the bottlenecks being faced by apparel exporters, Uppal said: “The availability of speciality fabric is a big bottleneck for which we have been aggressively demanding 5 percent duty scrip for the imports of fabrics. It must be considered favourably by the new government to boost Apparel exports”.
“Rising interest rate is another issue which hampers growth for which we have requested the government for a Separate chapter for pre and post shipment export credit at fixed rate of 7 percent interest, and to treat Readymade Garment under priority sector lending,” he added.

PTI