India overtakes Germany and Italy, is new world No. 2 in textile exports

NEW DELHI: India has overtaken Germany and Italy to emerge as the world's second largest textile exporter. But it lags China, whose exports are nearly seven times higher.

Data released by the Apparel Export Promotion Council, the industry body for garment exporters, showed that India's textiles exports were estimated at $40 billion in 2013, compared with China's $274 billion. Textiles includes everything from fibre and yarn to fabric, made-ups and readymade garments made of cotton, silk, wool and synthetic yarn.

Over 55% of the global trade relates to readymade garments, where India ranked sixth in 2013 with exports of $16 billion, which is around 40% of the country's textiles exports. India beat Turkey to move up a notch. For China the share of garments is estimated at close to 60%, indicating that the government needs to provide a bigger fillip to the readymade industry.

Apart from China, Italy and Germany, smaller countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam have overtaken India in recent years as major suppliers to retail chains in Europe and the US on the back of cheap labour and lower-duty access.

The industry had expected part of the business from Bangladesh to shift to India after accidents in factories raised safety concerns. But it managed to log 18% growth in the garments segment in 2013, compared to global growth of 6%.

Over the past few months the Indian garment industry has staged a recovery of sorts which can be seen in the 23% rise in exports of shirts, trousers, skirts and other readymades during 2013. Exporters said a change in focus to markets beyond the US and the EU has helped.



"Despite having slow recovery in the US and EU, our biggest traditional markets as well as prevailing global slowdown coupled with sustained cost of inflationary inputs, we made the best possible efforts to reach here. The government policy of diversification of market and product base has helped us and we ventured into the newer markets, which paid huge dividends. We also leveraged our raw material strengths and followed sustained better compliance practices which attracted the buyers and international brands across globe to source from India," said AEPC chairman Virender Uppal.

In recent years, UAE, Oman, Brazil, Malaysia, Poland and the Russian Federation have seen a spurt in growth.