Textile Plaza | Natural and Synthetic Textile Materials

The Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) has urged the Indian government to put a monthly ceiling of 4 lakh bales on raw cotton exports, allowing 50 lakh bales of raw cotton for exports.The move has been designed to help SME textiles and garment exporters to maintain their foothold in the export markets.

'Putting a monthly cap on raw cotton exports will help the small-scale raw cotton exporters to ensure that they cater to the export market requirements and maintain a competitive position in the market, besides ensuring adequate supply of raw cotton to the domestic market at a reasonable rate,' said Nitin Maheshwari, proprietor of Ambika Synthetic Mills, a small-sized textile mill in Kolhapur.

The FIEO has cautioned that the hike in raw cotton prices will make it difficult for the SME garment exporters to maintain their competitiveness in the global market. This in turn, will compel several small spinning mills to shut their units; thereby having serious implications on the employment rate as the textile sector is one of the largest employment providers.

'Higher supplies of raw cotton to international buyers have pushed the domestic prices of cotton to historical highs in the spot market. Consequently, it has become difficult for small-scale textile traders to pay exorbitant prices of raw cotton and therefore, they are unable to continue production and fail to compete with their global counterparts,' said Prakash Bhatnagar, proprietor of Cotton Trading Agency, a small-sized cotton trading unit based in Kolkata.

Furthermore, small-scale exporters are apprehensive about cotton prices surging further as there are reports that nearly 20 lakh bales have been bought by traders for exports.

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