The survey was tabled in Parliament by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on January 31.

India’s Economic Survey 2022-23 indicates that private investment gathered momentum during the current fiscal in all major sectors, including the textile sector. However, manufacturing industries like textiles, apparel and leather have been showing tepid growth as the export demand for these products remained soft due to slow global demand.

A quick study of the survey report by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) showed that the textile sector recorded private investment of about ₹10,000 crore in first half of 2022-23 (i.e., April 2022 to September 2022). But the investment slowed down to around ₹7,000 crore in second half of the current fiscal. Textile sector was underperformer compared to other economic sectors like steel, electricity, chemical, auto and pharma.

The growth in textile sector was disappointing because of tepid demand from global market. In the first eight months of the current fiscal, the sector could maintain positive growth (of 5.9 per cent year-on-year) only in May. The textiles sector growth remained negative in the remaining seven months from April to November 2022. The sector witnessed negative growth of 0.4 per cent in April 2022, 3.1 per cent in June, 9 per cent in July, 12.5 per cent in August, 13.9 per cent in September, 18.7 per cent in October and 9 per cent in November 2022.

As per the report, wearing apparel industry recorded growth in April (55.2 per cent), May (69.9 per cent), June (42.6 per cent) and July 2022 (15.1 per cent). But it went into red in August (-18.3 per cent), September (-21.6 per cent), October (-36.6 per cent) and November 2022 (-11.7 per cent). Leather and related products noted growth of 5 per cent in April, 47.5 per cent in May and 1.9 per cent in June 2022. But they too turned negative in subsequent months and registered degrowth of 13.5 per cent in July, 16 per cent in August, 17.5 per cent in September, 25.5 per cent in October and 2 per cent in November 2022.

The survey indicated that most of the segments within the manufacturing sector, except the textile industry, witnessed growth in credit offtake in November 2022. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) could not recover in the textile sector after COVID disruption in fiscal 2020-21.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KUL)