Allow duty-free import of cotton -NCTC members appeal Govt.

An Industry Delegation comprising Members of National Committee on Textiles and Clothing (NCTC) on Monday met, the Union Minister of Textiles, Piyush Goyal, and submitted a Joint Memorandum to allow duty-free import of cotton not only to tide over the present crisis but also to achieve the desired target set for the Indian T&C Industry for the financial year 2022-23.

The NCTC delegation comprised of T. Rajkumar, Chairman, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), Narendra Goenka, Chairman, Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), Manoj Patodia, Chairman, The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (TEXPROCIL),  Ravi Sam, Chairman, The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA), and  Raja M. Shanmugham, President, Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA).

They apprised the Minister of the shortage of quality cotton that the Textiles and Clothing Industry (T&C) is facing at the moment and appealed to him to allow the duty-free import of cotton not only to tide over the present crisis but also to achieve the desired target set for the Indian T&C Industry for the financial year 2022-23.

They briefed the Minister that the levy of 11% import duty on cotton is affecting the global competitiveness of the Indian T&C Industry, as the cotton traders are adopting an import parity pricing policy.

Further they pointed out that the MSME segments, including Handloom, Powerloom, Independent Knitting, Weaving, Processing, Garmenting and Made-up segments that account over 80% of the exports have no access for advance authorization scheme and duty-free import of cotton. These are the worst affected segments and their capacity utilization has already dwindled down to below 70%, resulting in huge job losses and a declining trend in the GST revenue.

The Industry delegation appealed to the Minister that the only option left for the T&C Industry is to allow duty-free import of cotton not only to tide over the present crisis but also to achieve the cotton textile’s export target of US$ 16.963 billion (25% increase) and the total textiles and clothing’s export target of US$ 47.029 billion (6% increase) for the financial year 2022-23.