Textile bodies appreciate the efforts taken by the Union Textile Minister

Textile bodies appreciated the unstinted efforts taken by the union textile minister Piyush Goyal and urged the stakeholders to come together in a mission mode for holistic growth of the cotton textile value chain in India as advised by the minister. 

In a joint press release issued by T Rajkumar, chairman of Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), Manojkumar Patodia, chairman, The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (TEXPROCIL) and Ravi Sam, chairman of The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA), who attended the stakeholders meeting, have highly appreciated the unstinted efforts constantly taken by the minister.

 Realizing the urgent need for enhancing cotton production, productivity, quality and branding cotton, the minister constituted a textile advisory group under the chairmanship of Suresh A Kotak, a veteran in cotton. In a two-day long meeting conducted with the stakeholders on Sunday, union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar and union minister of state for textiles, Darshana Vikram Jardosh came up with numerous short and long term strategies not only to mitigate the current challenges, but also to achieve the the prime minister vision of 5Fs (Farm to Foreign).In the release, they said that India has to adopt global best practices to improve cotton productivity and quality and also brand the Indian cotton and textile products for the benefit of all the stakeholders in the cotton textile value chain including the farmers. 

“The strategy to have testing facilities from farm to industry and also production of clean and contamination free cotton would soon enable the country to brand the Indian cotton and its textile products on par with any other international cotton. 

The decision of using coloured HDPE bag for fertilizer packing would resolve the perennial problem regarding white HDPE contamination present in the Indian cotton as the farmers use these bags for handling Kapas (seed cotton),” said the release issued by the chiefs of CITI, TEXPROCIL and SIMA.

They stated that tremendous opportunities would emerge with the signing of FTAs with UAE and Australia and significant progress made for the conclusion of FTA with the EU, UK and Canada. 

With the support of benefits extended in the form of RoSCTL, RoDTEP, NTTM and PM MITRA schemes, the demand for quality cotton would increase exponentially, the release added.

 They, further,  appreciated the decision of using the right seeds, adoption of modern technology and progressive agricultural practices would enable India to increase the yield and profit margins of the cotton farmers.

The industry has welcomed the strategy to curb illegal sale of spurious seeds and educating the younger farmers to take a lead in using genetically pure certifiedseeds in addition to adopting global best practices by training them intensively. 

They also appreciated the strategy of industry taking the lead in the cotton development programmes and requested all the manufacturing segments, especially the users of cotton to come forward, extend necessary financial support for creating corpus for the joint initiatives of the cotton development programme. 

They have said it is very essential for the industry to take the lead if India wants to derive the benefits of FTAs and emerging new market opportunities as the country has already started facing a shortage of cotton.