The first month of this calendar year has brought some cheer to the textile manufacturers in Tiruppur, as knitwear exports have reported a marginal positive growth after reporting a fall for five consecutive months.
In dollar terms, knitwear exports from Tiruppur grew 1.5 per cent at $413 million when compared with $407 million in January 2023. Overall, knitwear exports from India grew 0.9 per cent at $751 million during the last month as against $744 million in January 2022.
For the 10-month period ended, total knitwear exports from Tiruppur stood at $3.713 billion as against $3.591 billion in the year-ago period, an increase of 3.4 per cent. All India knitwear exports grew 0.9 per cent at $6.714 billion ($6.654 billion), according to data provided by Tiruppur Exporters’ Association (TEA).
“Knitwear segment has seen some improvements now when compared with December 2022 quarter. The cotton yarn movement that was sluggish over six months has now got revived. With increasing enquiries/orders from garment units, the spinning mills have now started running for seven days as against four days earlier,” K M Subramanian, President, TEA told businessline.
High inflation
Knitwear exports from Tiruppur started to decline in August 2022 as a result of the Russian-Ukraine war. High inflation and recessionary trends led to subdued demand for textiles and apparel in the US and European markets. During August-December 2022 period, total knitwear exports from Tiruppur fell 21 per cent to $1.607 billion when compared with $2.039 billion in the same previous year.
With gradual improvements from this month, Tiruppur exporters hope to start the new fiscal FY24 with good growth in June 2023 quarter when compared with March 2023 quarter.
Meanwhile, TEA had, last week, requested the RBI to extend the “Export Refinance Scheme” to banks, to augment export credit. Under such a mechanism, banks may be encouraged to provide export credit in Rupee, to exporters and the same amount can be refinanced by the RBI at the repo rate. This will bring down the interest cost for export credit providing much-needed competitiveness to exports.