The Union Minister for Textiles, Commerce and Industry, and Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Piyush Goyal, has said that it is time for the Indian textile industry to focus on scale, quality, speed and higher volume.
Union minister Goyal was addressing the keynote session of ‘Technotex 2023: Envisioning Indian Technical Textiles @2047’, the 10th edition of the International Exhibition and Conference on Technical Textiles, at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Goregaon, in Mumbai, on Friday, February 24.
“It is time we started looking at scale and more composite plants, to use more modern technology, thereby also enabling us to meet the needs of large corporate buyers across the world,” Goyal said.
“Many international companies tell me that they are not able to find high-quality, high-volume suppliers, even though many would prefer to have a relationship with India and work with democracy and transparent rule-based systems. In this context, it is time we look at growth, scale and speed,” he added.
The Union minister said that this is the right time to capture world markets. “Today is the right time to capture world markets. Our Free Trade Agreements with the UAE and Australia came into force last year. We are also working on agreements with other countries, including those of the European Union,” he said.
“The direction is to become an international player; no country has become a developed nation without playing an integral role in the global supply chain. We have to integrate our economy with those of the developed countries to reach our potential and the desires of our young population,” he added.
According to the minister, given the wide range of applications for technical textiles, this is the area of the future. “I appeal to startups as well as large corporations to consider expanding rapidly in the technical textiles field. Our share of the global market is about 2.5 per cent; I believe that the Indian market will grow faster than 12 per cent if we can showcase its purposes,” Goyal pointed out.
Encouraging the participants to be big and bold, Union minister Goyal shared his belief that India can shoot for a $200 billion industry in technical textiles. “The technical textile sector will enable us to find applications in modern technology areas. Technical textiles are going to be used increasingly in ocean ships and the airline industry as well,” he said.
The minister said that Technotex will help us showcase our abilities to Indian companies and the rest of the world. “More webinars, seminars and conferences with technical people from different user sectors should be held, where the textiles industry can showcase the various applications of technical textiles,” he said.
He exhorted the domestic industry to earn the trust of the world as a reliable supplier of technical textiles so that India’s market share can be significantly expanded.