The Cotton Textile Export Promotion Council has urged the newly-appointed Union Cabinet Minister of Textiles Piyush Goyal to notify RoDTEP (Remission of Duties and Taxes on Export Products) rates at the earliest and maintain the RoSCTL (Rebate of State and Central Levies and Taxes (RoSCTL) to keep the growth momentum in exports.

In the first interaction with the Union Minister and Darshana Jardosh, Minister of State for Textiles, the industry said the cotton textile sector is one of the few sectors that had achieved a positive growth last fiscal despite the pandemic situation.

Manoj Patodia, Chairman, Texprocil, said cotton textile (including raw cotton) exports increased nine per cent to $11 billion last fiscal against $10 billion in the same period last year.

The textile industry also urged the minister to scrap the custom duty on cotton as some of the variety such as branded extra long staple cotton and contamination-free cotton are not produced in India and needs to be imported to meet the growing demand. It is important to make available cotton at international prices to promote value added exports, said Patodia.

Pact with UK

On the Indo-UK free trade agreement, Texprocil urged the Minister to include the textiles and clothing sector upfront in the “pre-negotiation scoping phase” or any envisaged “early harvest” programme to overcome the disadvantage faced by the Indian exporters due to duty concessions already granted by UK to competing nations such as Bangladesh , Pakistan, Vietnam, Turkey and Sri Lanka.

Patodia also requested to expedite the Indo-European Union free trade agreement to help Indian exporters overcome the disadvantage of tariff preferences given to competing countries and create a level playing field.

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