Taking a serious view of the high price of viscose staple fibre (VSF) in India, the captains of the various segments of VSF value chain, namely 10 leading textile and apparel bodies of India, have submitted a joint representation to the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi for the removal of anti-dumping duty (ADD) on import of VSF to achieve global competitiveness.
They have also pleaded to the Union Ministers of Finance, Commerce and Textiles and their respective secretaries in this regard.
These trade bodies include Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), Bhiwandi Powerloom Weavers Federation Ltd. (BPWF), Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), The Clothing Manufacturers Association of India (CMAI), Federation of Gujarat Weavers’ Welfare Association (FGWWA), Handloom Export Promotion Council (HEPC), Indian Spinners Association (ISA), Ichalkaranji Shuttleless Looms Owners Association (ISLOA), Powerloom Development Export Promotion Council (PDEXCIL) and Tamil Nadu Federation of Powerloom Associations (TNFPA).
The VSF value chain stakeholders pointed out that India, despite being the second largest producer of MMF in the world, has only 20 per cent share in total T&C exports, while China’s share of MMF products stands at 80 per cent.
The Indian Textile industry is not in a position to fully capture the market opportunities when compared to Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc., mainly due to the expensive VSF price which is the second most important basic raw material for the MMF textile value chain.
During the last 4 years, the imports of VSF spun yarn have increased by 27 times, which has greatly affected the highly capital- and labour-intensive spinning sector including the latest investments in air vortex technology.
These associations stated that keeping in mind the growing demand for viscose fibre in India, the current domestic capacity is not enough and hence the domestic producer is adopting import parity pricing while selling the fibre to domestic spinners at a premium of Rs. 20/kg taking advantage of ADD, while the same fibre is being exported to our competing countries at an international prices.