The textile manufacturing industry, the largest employer in Gujarat, after agriculture, is slowly losing its sheen in the state, according to a study by research firm Knight Frank India.

The report provides extensive scenario of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka that are identified as leaders in manufacturing capabilities.

According to the study, released recently, the textile industry employs close to two lakh people accounting for 18 per cent of total manufacturing workforce in Gujarat.

The share of textile in the state's total manufacturing output has come down to 6 per cent from 12 in the last 10 years, it said.

It further said that even the number of factories has decreased by 22 per cent to 1,523 from 1,957 a decade ago. This is in sharp contrast to Tamil Nadu where the number of factories in textile sector has increased by more than 1.5 times in the last 10 years.

According to the Knight Frank Output Specialisation Matrix, textile is placed in the ‘Lost Opportunity' quadrant, meaning that the state is losing its specialisation in the sector compared to rest of India.

Dr Samantak Das, National Head, Research, Knight Frank India, said, “The erstwhile textile hubs of Ahmedabad and Surat are gradually losing out to Tirupur and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. Going forward textile sector output will grow annually by 12 per cent in next five years. However, this will still be lower than Tamil Nadu's 14 per cent growth,” Dr Das said.

He, however, said the loss of textile in the state will be compensated by gains in emerging sectors such as automobile and engineering.

“Gujarat has attracted huge amount of investment in the automobile sector with companies such as Tata Motors, Peugeot and Ford setting up large production facilities,” he said.

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