The Cotton Association of India (CAI) wants the period for duty-free cotton imports to be extended to November 30, 2022.

Recent disruptions in the global supply chain have delayed the India-bound cotton imports from Australia and the US. Shipments are expected to reach Indian ports after a delay of about four weeks.

Extension in the period of duty-free import, says CAI, will facilitate importers to receive the natural fiber and will also mitigate the sufferings of Indian importers. Acute shortage of containers has also added to the problems of importers.

India had decided to waive the import duty on cotton till September 30, 2022, when the new season began, and the period was later extended till October 31. Now, the Cotton Association of India has urged that the period be extended for another month.However, cotton prices have dropped by around 44 per cent. So it will be very difficult to decide when the peak arrival season will begin in India. Cotton prices are expected to further drop when arrivals increase in the weeks to come. The cotton textile industry contributed significantly to achieving last year’s merchandise export targets. India’s cotton production in the 2022/2023 season is likely to be up 12 per cent from a year ago.

Bangladesh and South Korea have a partnership in the apparel and textile sector. They have identified innovation, diversification and technological upgradation as the key strategic priorities for their future growth.

The collaboration also seeks to promote direct or joint venture investments from South Korea to Bangladesh in high-end garment items, non-cotton textiles, woven textiles and garments, and skills development and innovation.

South Korea is one of the emerging markets for Bangladesh, which aims at hiking apparel exports to South Korea. South Korea currently sources 34 per cent of its apparel items from China, but due to rising costs, apparel production is increasingly moving out of China, and Bangladesh’s entrepreneurs now have an opportunity to capture the South Korean market. Bangladesh’s apparel shipments to South Korea have experienced a positive growth over the past five years despite the pandemic-led slowdown. But a big push will be taken this year to capture a bigger share of the South Korean marketwith diversified items such as underwear, denims, shirts, jackets and pullovers as South Korea has a great demand for high-value winter clothing and denim. Other potential products that have good demand in the country include non-leather footwear, home textiles, jute and jute products etc.

Essentials is H&M’s attempt at slow fashion. The collection is antithetical to the fast fashion agenda and has a tightly-edited, season-less line of wardrobe staples.

The idea is to slow down. Instead of creating wastefully, H&M has made garments that are designed to stand the test of time. Every style in the collection is individually numbered, and the brand plans to never feature more than 20 at a time. These are classic men’s wear pieces like T-shirts, jeans, shirts, coats, jackets etc and considerable development and fabric research have gone into creating these garments. This means, for instance, adding a smidge of stretch to jeans to ensure comfort or getting fit details like the lengths on T-shirts just right.

Fast fashion leaves a large environmental footprint. So this is Swedish giant H&M’s attempt at making some concerted steps towards righting some wrongs. The growing issue of ethical fashion has thrown a spotlight on the sustainability of fast fashion and in turn guided the fashion industry down a road toward a more sustainable fiber use.

Fast fashion is a term coined to the quick turnaround times between runway, manufacture and retail which can be as short as ten days.The average fashion designer now creates anything between 18 to 25 collections a year.

A conference on Protech (Protective Textiles) will be held in New Delhi, November 16, 2022.

Protective textiles are a segment of technical textiles. The conclave will provide a platform for buyers and sellers to interact and come up with an action plan to benefit from the ongoing demand for protective textiles. Personnel from defence, paramilitary, fire brigade forces, oil industry, steel, aluminium industry, security sector, entrepreneurs and professionals from the technical textiles industry especially Protech, technical officers, R&D personnel, machinery manufacturers and faculty from well-known textile institutes will also take part in the conclave.

To benefit the participants and keep them abreast of the latest technologies and innovative products, an exhibition will be arranged along with the conclave in which around 30 companies/agencies will participate and will showcase the innovative products in the field of protech. So the exhibition will provide an opportunity for manufacturers to showcase their developments and innovations.

The National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM) and Production Linked Incentive schemes are a few of the major steps taken in India to promote the technical textile industry. Market development, market promotion, international technical collaborations, investment promotions and the Make in India initiative are also there to promote this industry. Metakey: protech, trade show, technical textiles, The National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM), conference, exhibition

Japan’s imports of clothing and accessories increased by 29 per cent during April 2022 to September 2022.

These imports were three per cent of total imports during the first six months of this year. Imports of textile yarn and fabrics from April 2022 to September 2022 were 30 per cent higher than the same period of last year.These imports were one per cent of the total imports by Japan.

The country’s exports of textile yarn and fabrics during the first half of fiscal 2022 increased by 17 per cent year on year. These exports were 0.8 per cent of total exports from Japan during April 2022 to September 2022.Japan’s exports of textile machinery were 20 per cent higher than in April 2021 to September 2021 and contributed 0.3 per cent to total exports.

During September 2022, Japan’s imports of clothing and accessories increased by 40 per cent year on year. Clothing imports accounted for three per cent of the country’s total imports during the month under review. Imports of textile yarn and fabrics in September 2022 were 33 per cent higher than in the same month of last year.Japan’s exports of textile yarn and fabrics increased by 21 per cent year on year.

Ana Andjelic is chief brand officer of Esprit.

Based in the fashion brand’s New York office, she will be tasked with redefining the brand’s new identity and leading the global creative and design hub in New York. Andjelic joins Esprit from Gap-owned Banana Republic, where she served as chief brand officer.

She was tasked with leading the the rebranding venture, overseeing the marketing, creative, and product design functions, and was responsible for setting the new brand strategy, creative and editorial directions. She also participated in the planning of the brand’s omnichannel marketing execution. Prior to Banana Republic, Andjelic was chief marketing officer at Mansur Gavriel and chief brand officer at Rebecca Minkoff.

Lifestyle fashion brand Esprit based in Hong Kong is in the process of transforming into a global company with creative minds and processes in key cities enabling consumers to be connected to the brand on a multi-dimensional level. This will enable Esprit to adapt to major challenges in fashion and the macro environment in order to propel it into the future.In addition, Hong Kong will continue to be the worldwide administrative headquarters for finance, sourcing, and operations.Esprit has opened hubs in London and New York.

Countries like Turkey and China are said to employ slave or forced labor in garment production.

The chances of goods produced using forced labour entering supply chains are worsening. Syrian migrants, including children, are said to work in Turkey within the garment industry and the agricultural sector.

China is rated extreme risk due to reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang. Modern slavery has been known to exist for years. About 50 million people are trapped in modern slavery globally. So, organisations need to work harder to keep goods tainted by forced labour out of their supply chain.

Poverty has long been a key determining factor in the prevalence of modern slavery. Households lacking economic security are more likely to become dependent on employment agents within the informal economy, which can lead to exploitation. More than 15 of the 24 extreme risk countries are low and lower-middle income economies. This group includes Myanmar and Pakistan, two leading exporters of goods including clothing and cotton fabric.

Rising inflation and fears of a global recession suggest the world is headed for a period of prolonged economic instability which will leave millions more people vulnerable to exploitation.The European Commission has unveiled a plan to ban products made with forced labour from entering the EU market.

The export chain of India to other countries is now undergoing a metamorphosis in post-pandemic years. India’s merchandise exports to all destinations grew 19.5 per cent in the first five months of this fiscal to $196.5 billion, and a handful of countries have had a major role to play in this. The Netherlands may be a small country but it is mighty in the export chain as it has emerged as India’s third-largest export destination after having jumped two ranks ahead of China and Bangladesh, in the list of India’s top 10 export destinations since the financial year having seen a 106 per cent increase in dispatches until August FY22 compared to 2021.

A good year so far for Indian exports

This sudden change was mainly because India’s exports to the Netherlands were steered by an almost 238 per cent jump in dispatches of oil products until August this fiscal year amounting to $3.67 billion. Along with this, the export supplies of chemicals at $513 million and pharmaceuticals at 219 million remained substantial. Reports suggest, garment exports from India to the Netherlands are too will see good growth in the current year. In the first half of 2022, exports increased to $352.153 million, compared to $264.219 million in H2, 2021 and $227.767 million of H1, 2021. What’s more, in Netherland’s apparel imports, India moved up from tenth to sixth position in the first half of 2022.

Meanwhile, the US and the UAE continue to be the largest and second-largest overall export destinations for India, respectively, for India and are expected to be that way for quite some more years. The exports to the US increased to 18.3 per cent until August to $35.2 billion, while those to the UAE shot up 27.3 per cent to $13.8 billion in the same period.

The second surprise element in the export chain is that of Brazil, the world’s fifth largest country size-wise, which earlier occupied the 21st spot in FY22, but has now leapt to becoming India’s 8th biggest export market. Export shipment to Brazil sprung to 70.9 per cent in the first five months of this fiscal year amounting to $4.7 billion.

The going has been good so far for India exports around the globe. Exports to Indonesia also increased by 43 per cent to $4.8 billion.

China’s export lapses, wellness tourism to be cashed upon

China is one of the only countries to which exports dropped from India. It fell almost 35.6 per cent until August this fiscal to $6.8 billion. This was mainly due to China’s pandemic worsening with new variants and local outbreaks spreading and major port cities going under quarantine. For India, now is the time to act to make a windfall while China’s stakes are down.

India’s export-to-GDP ratio has grown quickly since the early 1990s and is now almost the same as China, a country that is regarded as the world’s number one exporter of goods, despite being a poor country a decade ago. More than the supply of goods and commodities, it is the supply of business services exports that has been stellar.

India’s share of global services trade has almost quadrupled from 0.5 per cent in 1995 to 3.5 per cent in 2018 and growth is still increasing. India is now considered to be a business brain centre of the world. Along with the ICT sector, the pharmaceuticals, medical and wellness tourism segments are doing well and patients seeking high-quality medical treatment at reasonable prices from Asian countries like Bangladesh are giving making medical tourism a new high.

To understand its true potential, India needs to modernise labor and land regulations, address infrastructure bottlenecks and improve its services sector to trade and investment, which will help it to become a super=power in the near future.

Pandemic induced lockdown, immediately followed by the war in Ukraine and EU’s sanctions against Russia has led to dark clouds of recession over Europe. A visible economic slowdown that threatens to get worse and an ever-rising inflation and energy costs, the picture is far from pretty. European consumers are not only feeling the pinch but are concerned about the affordability of energy bills as autumn will quickly turn to winter. This is leading to Europeans cutting down on all non-essential costs and garments are one of them.

An International Monetary Fund report earlier in October predicting the Euro zone will grow 3.1 per cent in 2022 and slide down to a mere 0.5 per cent in 2023. A worrying time does seem to lie ahead for South and South East Asian garment exporters and Bangladesh in particular. In fact, they are already weighed in by the economic crisis, and this has been red flagged by other garment exporting nations as well.

South East Asia faces the repercussion

In Bangladesh, things have taken a turn for the worse for RMG exports since last September. The sector posted a 7.5 per cent negative growth last month compared to the same month last year. Media reports indicate, the sector earned $1.77 billion, 19 per cent lower than the same period in 2021. Experts say negative growth is likely to continue for the next few months. At a time when the economy is already battling with a downward inflow of remittances through formal channels and increasing forex payments for fossil fuel imports, a fall in exports spells trouble for the economy at large. As per BGMEA, most factories are operating at 30 per cent capacity compared to the preceding quarter. The unavailability of gas and erratic power supply has also not helped matters.

Brian Lee Shun Rong, an economist at Malaysia’s largest financial services group, Maybank has warned that South East Asia will continue to feel the effect of declining exports as EU enters recession as it continues to face supply and cost of living shocks from the Russia-Ukraine war. Indeed, 2023 will prove to be a challenging year for the textile and RMG sectors in Asia.

A fledgling economy with the status of an underdeveloped one, Cambodia is a case in point. Its textile and RMG goods contribute well over 50 per cent to its exports and in January 2022, registered a good 37 per cent growth. By July, growth figures had dropped by nearly half as it stood at 19.7 per cent and fell into a trench in August at 2.7 per cent. Cambodia’s overall exports fell by 7.5% in September as per the Cambodian General Department of Customs and Excise report. This steady decline has already affected foreign currency reserves, textile and garment factories and employment in the country. Ken Loo, secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia, an industry body, points out Cambodia’s exports to European markets will continue to decline in the fourth quarter of this year and into 2023.

Neighbor Vietnam is in a similar situation. Last year, Vietnam scored big as exports to the EU soared 14.8 per cent to $63.6 billion only to register a sharp decline of 14 per cent in August and September this year. Like Cambodia, Vietnam’s manufacturers are suspending operations in their factories and letting workers go. The Asian Development Bank reviewed and changed its forecasts for developing Asia, which includes much of Southeast Asia, from 5.2 per cent to 4.6 per cent for 2022, and from 5.3 per cent to 5.2 per cent for 2023. As per ADB’s senior economist James Villafuerte, the impact of EU facing an impending recession would vary country wise. The worst hit would be Cambodia and Vietnam whereas Malaysia and Indonesia would not be so affected.

Domestic markets to the rescue

Whilst naysayers predict impending gloom, the domestic markets of the South East Asian collective have opened up well after the lockdown and are slowly turning towards the pre-pandemic robustness. This will open up domestic consumption that will augur well for the local manufacturing sector although it will have to come up with more cost efficient ways to cater to a willing consumer segment with less spending power than their Europoean counterparts.

Vietnam has become a yarn supplier to India. While India’s yarn exports showed a downward trend this year, its imports from Vietnam have jumped.The far-eastern country was earlier one of the major markets for Indian cotton yarn. The scarcity of cotton along with a comparatively higher price in India has resulted in a shift in its trade dynamics with Vietnam.

Cotton prices in India are still ruling higher than those in the international market.India’s yarn exports to Vietnam dropped to $6.485 million in July 2022 from $18.084 million in February 2022. Monthly exports were at $17.130 million in March 2022, $12.715 million in April 2022, $10.435 million in May 2022 and $9.828 million in June 2022.India’s yarn exports to Vietnam had registered growth during the preceding years. Exports increased in 2020 to $169.087 million from $131.540 million in 2019. They further rose to $220.579 million in 2021.

On the other hand, India’s imports of yarn from Vietnam increased drastically to $24.875 million in July 2022 from $4.521 million in March 2022. India had imported yarn worth $6.612 million in April 2022, $7.733 million in May 2022 and $7.714 million in June 2022. Annually, imports recovered to $60.155 million from $37.530 million in 2020.