Narendra Goenka, Chairman, Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), has appealed to the garment industry to grab the emerging global opportunity by revamping production capacity, reducing cost, focusing upon MMF and embracing best sustainable practices.
He also requested the Government to address stress points like ensuring raw material security, addressing RoSCTL issues, announcing a new ATUF Scheme, announcing PLI-2, etc.
Addressing the 43rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Council, he said, “We have to be poised to grab the opportunity by ramping up our production capacity, getting into the MMF segment, integrating with the global value chain and picking up the best practices like sustainability as the world embraces China Plus One strategy.”
He added “We have to actively lower our cost of production and work on meeting the global standards. To match the growing global demand, our scale has to be larger and skills have to be matched.”
In the last one year, he further said, India has signed three free trade pacts with Mauritius, the UAE and Australia, and similar negotiations with many other nations including the UK and Canada are picking up pace – with possibility of interim deals covering apparel sector.
These FTAs are sure to neutralise the advantage that India’s competitors use to enjoy in some of the important markets because of GSP and other NTBs (non-tariff barriers to trade).
Requesting the Government to address the stress points for trade, he highlighted, “Most important being the raw material security, owing to the spiralling prices of raw cotton and cotton yarn.”
He further added that another pressing issue is RoSCTL. “We have been requesting the Government to delete the condition in the notification issued by DoR for holding the transferee liable for the non-realisation/excess availed by the exporter, which will also curtail its misuse,” he said.
