Demand for home textiles used for furnishing residence, towels, bedsheets, pillow covers and table linens is recovering as the fear of COVID pandemic subsides with the launch of vaccine.

The reopening of hotels and motels has spurred demand for bed linen as customers have become more picky about the freshness of bed linen in COVID times.

This has led to most textile companies registering strong recovery in the third quarter of this fiscal. These companies expect the demand uptick to continue in the March quarter as the demand in the domestic market is also picking slowly.

However, the import duty of 10 per cent on raw cotton imposed in the Union Budget may push up the cost of textile companies and impact their margins. The levy of import duty on cotton will push up cost of extra long staple cotton such as GizaCotton from Egypt and Supima Cotton from the US and makes India lose ground on premium textile exports.