The Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) has lauded the government’s initiatives for creating a growth-conducive platform for the Textile value chain and forwarded some suggestions aimed at achieving the export target of 300 billion US dollar by 2024 to 25.

Congratulating the new textile minister, ITF secretary Prabhu Dhamodharan in a letter said in the last two years, the ministry had created a good platform for growth by improving efficiency in the system and introducing a few good policies to trigger growth in the sector.

The domestic textile industry, he said, was now equipped with capacities to export fabrics and can capture this huge market if the ministry and industry worked in tandem.

An immediate Preferential Trade Agreement with UK would help strengthen India’s position, Dhamodharan said, adding that apart from the traditional markets, tremendous effort was required to tap new markets such as Russia.

In spite of technological advancements, India was not able to figure out the exact crop size or provide correct estimates and stock levels of cotton, leading to heavy speculation as witnessed in the last 60 days, when there was a 35 per cent spurt in prices.

Thus, the government should institutionalise a strong mechanism to analyse and announce the exact cotton crop and stock data once a month, he suggested.

Damodharan appealed to the minister to visit the important textile clusters in the country and establish a direct connect with regional industry associations to understand the scope of growth of each cluster and renew collaboration towards growth right away.