President of Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) Ravi Sam hailed the Indian Government for concluding the bilateral agreement with Mauritius, UAE and Australia in the shortest ever time taken to conclude trade agreements by any country.
Ravi Sam said that the estimated bilateral trade of US $ 50 billion in five years would enable the textile industry to gain a major advantage, especially for the import of high-quality cotton produced by Australia and export of high value added textiles and clothing products to Australia (7 to 10 times value addition) and thereby create new jobs and fetch more revenue to the Government.
He also thanked PM Modi and the Textile Minister Piyush Goyal for allowing 3 lakh bales of duty-free import of cotton having staple length 28 mm & above from Australia under the ECTA. The President said via a press that this has given a big sigh of relief in the current scenario when the country is facing shortage of quality raw material and is unable to compete with countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, China, etc., owing to 11% import duty levied on cotton.
He stated that this cotton would greatly help the cotton knitwear clusters like Tirupur to boost its exports and also bring some stability to the cotton price that has been steeply increasing since the beginning of the cotton season.
The President expressed hope that the Government would soon allow duty-free import of cotton to mitigate the cotton crisis and enable the industry to achieve the target.