Man-made fibre textiles export to touch Rs 27K crore by 2010: SRTEPC

Mumbai, Sep 29 (UNI) The Synthetic&Rayon Textiles Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC) has set an ambitious target of Rs 27,000 crore for its members to achieve by 2010 in the export of Indian man-made fibre textiles as compared to its performance of Rs 10,227 crore in 2005-06.

Addressing the 52nd Annual General Meeting of SRTEPC here today, its Chairman R L Toshniwal said to achieve the Council's ambitious target, the stakeholders need to have a focused strategy to improve competitiveness in the industry.

In this context, he continued, the exporters have to take an initiative to change their mindset to become global players with exports as core of their business activity.

The government, Mr Toshniwal said, also needs to urgently facilitate competitiveness by suitable fiscal measures and provide a level playing field to create an enabling atmosphere free of infrastructural bottlenecks and cumbersome labour laws so that companies are encouraged to invest more, modernise quicker and develop global scales of economy to become robut competitors in the global markets.

He also assured that the Council would endeavour to play the crucial catalystic role for transformational change with emphasis on effective promotional programmes to help Indian companies to reach out to global markets.

Mr Toshniwal pointed out that the increasing number of buyers in Europe and the USA have shifted their attention to India as a promising destination for man-made fibre textiles since the quota barrier has been removed and also as a safeguard for reducing the risk of single country sourcing from China.

In this context, he said: ''Our strategy in this scenario should be to ensure integration from raw material to garmenting and economies of scale to emerge as the lowest cost producer capable of executing timely delivery.'' Commenting on the export performance, Mr Toshniwal said despite many policy constraints, exports of man-made textile fibres touched Rs 10,227 crore during 2005-06 registering a growth of nearly 6 per cent as compared to the previous year.

This growth was achieved despite rising crude oil prices, intensified competition in the major markets, heavy custom duty on raw materials and high transaction costs, he said.

On the first quarter performance of the current fiscal, the exports during April-July this year have increased nearly by 21 per cent as compared to the same period of last year to touch Rs 2,673 crore, he added.

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