India Garment Manufacturers Face Multiple Pressures

India garment manufacturers are facing a sharp rise in fabric prices and a serious shortage of goods. They urge the government to set up some control measures to avoid India's yarn and cotton exports out of control.

Rakesh Wilde, chairman of the clothing Exporters Association (GEA) recently expressed concern about the sharp rise in cotton and yarn prices. He said it would have a negative impact on the competitiveness of India's clothing industry. (RakeshVaid) He asked the government to properly control the export of cotton and yarn. He stressed the need to focus on high value-added clothing exports, rather than the export of raw cotton or yarn. If the clothing company exports the same amount of fabric, the added value will increase by 6 times.

Fabric prices rose 5-10%. Cotton prices rose 30% in the past 6 months to 27500 rupees /candy (1candy=355 kg), yarn prices showed that the price of 40s cotton yarn increased from 139 rupees per kilogram in August to 170 rupees per kilogram. Although cotton prices have rebounded, 400 of the 5 million 500 thousand bales of cotton that are expected to be exported have been exported in the first 5 months of this year.

This year (October 2009 -2010 September) cotton production is expected to increase to 29 million 500 thousand bales (170 kg / pack), compared with 29 million bales last year. Meanwhile, the garment export promotion association (AEPC) urged the Ministry of textiles to compress the export of cotton and cotton yarn in order to minimize the impact of rising fabric prices on the domestic garment industry.