With industrialization, surging consumption of textiles in engineered products and rising awareness about the benefits of using textile chemicals, the market in India is projected to cross $2.5 billion by 2021. Apart from this, rising disposable income and increasing living standards are expected to significantly augment demand for textile chemicals in India in the next five years.

With the upcoming GST bill, the positive impacts of GST on overall economic growth in the next few years this would make the manufacturing sector more competitive. As far as textile sector, being an essential item for the common man, textile items should be kept under GST with the minimum possible tax slab and special rates.

Demonetization and cashless transactions are the PM’s initiatives and Union Textile Minister, Smriti Irani, has encouraged digital payments in textile industry. Digital India Workshops have been coming up as an initiative to empower workers to make cashless money transactions using electronic devices and channels. These workshops are first of its kind organised in Indian textile industry.

The textile ministry is promoting cashless payment within the industry by encouraging textile workers, artisans and weavers to open bank accounts following the demonetization of high currency notes. The government has urged textile units to go cashless on a priority basis by opening accounts and using unified payments interface (UPI). The ministry of textiles also set up over 900 camps across the country to open bank accounts. Textile Commissioner Kavita Gupta says the ministry aims to bring all textiles workers within the banking fold and enable them to use digital payment transfer apps in the next three months. Although demonetization has affected cash flow in the textile industry it is likely to drive a constraint in demand for the entire textile value-chain.