High hopes of Indian textile industry from PM MITRA Parks

Indian government has announced the locations of the seven mega textile parks under the PM Mega Integrated Textile Regions and Apparel (PM MITRA) scheme recently. The decision has been hailed by Indian textile industry organisations as an important step to scale up textile production. The industry bodies anticipate that the move will not only attract foreign and domestic investment but also strengthen India’s position in the global textile sector. 

Ravi Sam, chairman, The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA), said in a statement, “The step would further strengthen Karnataka which has prominence in readymade garment manufacturing activities and Telangana which has been the third largest cotton producing state in the country. He said that the PM MITRA mega textile park scheme would aim at increasing the scale of operation and value-addition by providing unique infrastructure facility for textile processing, the weakest link in the whole textile value chain. The allocation of PM MITRA parks would boost the textile sector to enable the industry to achieve the envisage textile business size of $350 billion by 2030.” 

The textile parks with world-class industrial infrastructure as well as training and research facilities would attract cutting-edge technology and will boost not only FDI but also local investment in the textile sector, said T Rajkumar, chairman, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry’s (CITI). Geo-political factors made India one of the most sought-after destinations for investments so the global giants can shift their production base out of China. These parks will offer an excellent opportunity to create an integrated textile value chain right from spinning, weaving, processing/dyeing, and printing to garment manufacturing at a single location thereby reducing logistics costs. 

Textile industry has hailed Indian government’s announcement of 7 mega textile parks under the PM MITRA scheme. The Parks will feature world-class industrial infrastructure, research facilities and will attract investment. They will create a textile value chain, reduce logistics costs and boost FDI while also making India more competitive, stakeholders said.

Naren Goenka, chairman of the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), stated, “PM MITRA will re-establish India’s dominance as a global textile leader. These mega textile parks with world-class facilities and integrated value chain will create global champions by enhancing apparel exports exponentially and creating massive employment opportunities.” 

The parks will offer a unique opportunity where spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing, and stitching will be at a single location. It will drastically reduce the logistics costs and make the apparel sector globally competitive in true sense of the term by integrating the value chain, creating economies of scale, and making Indian garment exports ESG compliant, Goenka added. 

K M Subramanian, president, Tiruppur Exporters’ Association, said that TEA had suggested to create an ecosystem to attract MSMEs in Tiruppur, plug-and-play facilities and building area to commence for the benefit of MSMEs. There was also a requirement of an additional incentive to set up units in PM MITRA Park, inclusion of PLI-2 scheme to avail the incentives by the units being set up in the project. 

The parks will attract major global investment in textiles, helping to boost the sector’s exports to $100 billion by 2030. With the realignment of the global value chain and focus on friend-shoring, India is on the radar of global investors looking for opportunities outside China. A scheme like PM MITRA will expedite the process of decision making by such investors in India’s favour, A Sakthivel, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), said in a statement. 

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KUL)