Cotton Association of India (CAI) wants 11 per cent removal of tax on cotton imports in the country through a letter addressed to the Union Textiles Minister, Piyush Goyal.
By means of the letter, the CAI President Atul S. Ganatra sought to highlight how the price of Indian cotton has been 15 per cent higher than the cotton produced in other countries which, according to him, has eroded the competitiveness of the textile industry and reduced capacity utilisation to 50 per cent. He also reiterated that the 11 per cent tax levied makes the process very expensive.
‘This has made it very hard for our textile industry to get raw materials at prices that are competitive. This has made our value-added products less competitive in the international market, and the textile industry is only running at 50 per cent of its capacity,’ Ganatra wrote in the letter.
He said that getting rid of the duty would do a lot to keep cotton prices stable and help the textile industry work at its best.