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The garment industry is expected to achieve the $17 billion target for the current fiscal as the outbound shipments have already touched the about $5 billion level in the first four months of 2013—14, the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) today said.
This growth can be attributed to the recovery in USA economy, which is India’s second largest export destination, besides emerging markets like Latin America and Africa.
“For the current fiscal, the government has fixed $17 billion target for garment exports. If the same growth momentum continues and our major recommendations are met by the government, we may be quite close to the target,” AEPC Chairman A Sakthivel said while addressing the 34th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the council.
The council had also organised a discussion on enhancing apparel exports and had suggested various proposals during the meeting.
These proposals which include import of synthetic fabrics at a lower duty of 5 per cent in the entire 12th Five—Year Plan from the existing 21 per cent and a separate chapter for getting export credit at fixed 7.5 per cent as done in the past.
However, Sakthivel said the European market has still not recovered. The US and Europe together account for about 66 per cent of the country’s total apparel shipments.
Against the back drop of exports in 2012 -13, apparel exports have picked up really fast in the first four months of 2013 -14. During April - July 2013 - 14, exports have increased by 13 per cent year – on - year to about $5 billion, he added.
In 2012 - 13, apparel exports declined by 6 per cent to $12.92 billion.
Talking about the Driving Industry Towards Sustainable Human Capital Advancement (DISHA), Sakthivel said: “AEPC’s flagship programme ‘DISHA’ has now completed one year of implementation. With over 15 cluster awareness programmes, the programme today has over 328 enrollments.”
Also, 150 factories have already gone through a holistic capacity building in the area of 11 code principles of the programme, thus, completing the DISHA facilitation process and external assessment, he said.
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