Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) on Wednesday welcomed the Union Cabinet’s approval of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for manmade fibre (MMF) segment and technical textiles, saying that it will transform India’s growth story.
“The investment-oriented scheme of ₹10,683 crore for MMF and technical textiles will be a game changer for the sector,” A Sakthivel, Chairman of AEPC said in a statement.
The Chairman said that the scheme will result in fresh investment of gigantic proportions, expand manufacturing capacities and enhance exports multifold. “It will make India a key player in the global textile value chain with focus on high value MMF products. Besides, it will promote industrial development in backward regions of the country,” he added.
State of MMF sector
India has an abundant supply of MMF fibre and yarn, but we do not have enough production of quality MMF fabric. The PLI scheme will strengthen the Indian manufacturing capacity of MMF fabric and will thus increase the share of MMF based garments year after year. It is currently 20 per cent of the total apparels produced in India. With increase in MMF segment, the Indian apparel exports are expected to double in next three years.
“The efforts to promote the apparel industry has a much wider socio-economic impact as it is a labour-intensive sector and 70 per cent of its workforce are women. The industry, which is predominantly in the MSME segment, gives huge employment opportunities to the society’s most vulnerable sections,” said Sakthivel.
“PLI along with other decisive schemes like RoSCTL, RoDTEP, Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel (MITRA) Parks and National Technical Textiles Mission initiated by our Prime Minister will prove to be a game changer for the Indian textiles sector,” he added.
With PLI and other initiatives, the apparel industry is expected to contribute significantly in achieving both the merchandise export target of $400 billion for this financial year and the Prime Minister’s vision of making India ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’.
“PLI scheme for the textile sector will help the industry to build scale, competitiveness and specialisation. India needs to build a strong fabric manufacturing ecosystem to grow our apparel exports. Apart from apparel, MMF fabrics are also added as part of the PLI scheme, and this move will help the industry to invest and build large-scale capacities,” said Prabhu Dhamodharan, Convenor of Coimbatore-based Indian Texpreneurs Federation.
India is the sixth largest exporter of textiles and apparels in the world. The share of textile and apparel exports in India’s overall exports was 11 per cent in the year 2019-20.