Piyush Goyal is the new Minister of Textiles. Already holding portfolio of Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MOCI), he is expected to add value to the textile ministry owing to its close connectivity with MOCI.
As far as MOT’s dependency on MOCI is concerned, one can now witness better synergies and faster decision making. The textile and apparel industry has been urging for FTAs with core markets for quite some time, and with Piyush Goyal being the Minister of Textiles and Minister of Commerce and Industry, there is increased likelihood of positive developments on this front.
One can also expect the long pending National Textile Policy to now see the light of day as it has a lot to do with MOCI – not to mention that Piyush is known for taking quick action.
Here it is important to mention that Piyush Goyal has, so far, delivered good results in MOCI. In this regard, the Q1 of 2021-22 saw merchandise exports of US $ 95 billion – the highest ever achieved in the history of India.
Notably, this is 85 per cent higher than exports of Q1 of 2020-21 and 18 per cent higher than the exports of Q1 of 2019-20.
Similarly, India received the highest ever FDI inflow of US $ 81.72 billion in 2020-21. This is higher by 10 per cent compared to US $ 74.39 billion achieved in 2019-20. The positive momentum continues with FDI inflow of US $ 6.24 billion during April 2021, which is 38 per cent higher than April 2020.
Apart from these, MOCI has also been able to improve the ease-of-doing business and reduce the compliance burden. 6,426 compliances have been reduced in Phase-I, while 3,177 compliances are being been reduced in Phase II. The timeline for Phase I was 31 March 2021 and for Phase II it is 15 August 2021.
As Startup is the new buzzword now, MOCI has been making good progress in this regard also. Number of start-ups recognised by DPIIT has crossed 50,000 and is spread across 623 districts in India. Nearly 1.8 lakh formal jobs have been created by 16,000+ recognised start-ups in 2020-21.
Recently, Piyush Goyal was very vocal about e-commerce companies and had said that all e-commerce companies should follow the law of the land and not use muscle or money power to hurt Indian interests…
Future of fashion is e-commerce and policies in this regard will play a very significant role.
As MOCI has set an ambitious export target of achieving US $ 400 billion for 2021-22, with textile & clothing industry having an important role to achieve this target, one can expect that leadership of Piyush Goyal (now holding both ministries) will be instrumental in helping attain this target.
Last week, MOCI’s Logistics Division unveiled plans for ‘Freight Smart Cities’ also. All in all, there are enough reasons for the Indian textile and apparel industry to cheer about with the new minister at the helm.