• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Our Bureau

COIMBATORE, Aug.15

WHILE India's multi-fibre textile base and widely dispersed nature of the textile industry are comforting strengths on the country's competitiveness in free-market conditions, the burgeoning vast domestic market for textiles and clothing with the annual estimated consumption at $30 billion are clearly worrisome for the Government to protect this market from import swarm when the quota under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) will cease to exist by 2005.

According to the `Consumer purchases of textiles' survey conducted by the Textiles Committee, functioning under the Ministry of Textiles, which conducts the survey relating to the textiles consumption by the household sector in the country every year, the country's household and non-household textiles consumption stood at $30 billion and of this, the household textile consumption alone is $21.67 billion and the remaining are by the non-household consumption. Mr P. Nayak, Director (Market Research), Textiles Committee, said unlike the annual survey on household consumption of textiles, the survey on non-household consumption was being done once in five years. The survey revealed that cotton fibre was giving way to the cotton mixed/blended fibre textiles in the country with the shift in the preference to the synthetic/blended textile goods by the consumers in the rural areas remaining sharper than their urban counterparts.

This shift in preference to blended textiles in domestic consumption between 1990-2000 has grown by 13 per cent. The consumption of hosiery fabrics in the household consumption sector had doubled in the 10-year period, he said.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section
A flood of circulars

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line