To boost textile growth in Tamil Nadu, the Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) has proposed five points including facilitating the expansion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and branding textile and apparel from the state as the most sustainable destination for fashion sourcing and exploring the Japanese market.

The state can also devise a plan to capitalize the opportunity emerging from the central government’s MITRA scheme by creating an integrated and plug-and-play apparel park, it suggested. It can pick up ten to 15 small towns with good workforce availability and create infrastructure for stitching facilities. This will spread the sector and help avoid overcrowding in a few clusters apart from generating employment in small towns.

Cultivating a sustainable brand for textile-apparel from the state will help the sector capture the market share in value-added products as well, it said.

The state government can facilitate a working group with 50 of apparel companies to work exclusively with the Japanese apparel market. It can also conceptualize a scheme for medium and large companies to run technical institutes within the campus with university certifications. This will help the sector in attracting talent, and in the process, a skilled workforce for the sector can be developed,