Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF), an apex body for textile industry in the region, has made a few fundamental and transformational suggestions to the Centre to drive textile sector towards the USD 300 billion export target by 2024-25.

In a letter to Textile Minister Smriti Irani, congratulating her for taking over the ministry, ITF Secretary Prabhu Dhamodharan said that in the last two years, the ministry had created a good platform for growth by improving the efficiency in the system and has also designed few good policies to trigger growth in the sector.

He was of the view that the domestic textile industry was now equipped with capacities to export fabrics and can capture this huge market if the ministry and industry worked in tandem.
An immediate Preferential Trading Area (PTA) with the UK would help strengthen India's position, the ITF secretary said that apart from the traditional markets, tremendous effort was required to tap new markets like Russia.

Inspite of technological advancements, India was not able to figure out the exact crop size and exact estimates and stock levels of cotton, leading to heavy speculation, as witnessed in the last 60 days when there was a 35 per cent spurt in prices, he remarked.

The government should idealise a strong mechanism to analyse and announce the exact cotton crop and stock data once a month, he suggested.

Further, he said that the fashion world was moving towards Cotton-Man Made Fibre (MMF) blends and with high MMF prices, the Indian industry was lagging behind in the fastest growing segment and duty rationalisation of MMF fibres will trigger tremendous growth in this segment.

Prabhu also requested Irani to visit important textile clusters and have a direct connect with the regional industry Associations in order to understand the scope of growth of each major clusters and start collaboration towards growth.