Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) once again appealed to the prime minister Narendra Modi to expedite Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with Canada, a promising market for knitwear exporters, and help for enhancing knitwear exports to that country.
TEA president A. Sakthivel in a release today urged the prime minister to conclude the CEPA during his forthcoming visit to Canada and added that in 2013-14, total knitwear garments export from India to Canada was Rs 680 crore and a knitwear export ranking, Canada stands at 11th position. He pointed out that the same ranking has been witnessed in the first 9 month of this fiscal year also with a recorded value of Rs 502 crore.
He noted that Canada withdrew the entitlement to the benefit of the General Preferential Tariff (GPT) to 272 countries including India from January 1 last and the decision was taken by Canada after these countries were classified as ‘High Income’ or ‘Upper Middle Income’ countries by the World Bank for two consecutive years or, have had a share of equal to or greater than one per cent of world exports for two consecutive years. He said, after imposition of normal custom duty about 20 per cent for the knitwear garments with Canada, “We have lost our competitiveness there as our competing countries continue to enjoy the lower duty”.
Sakthivel said “our competing countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia are entitled to the least developed countries tariff treatment while Pakistan and Vietnam also continue to get benefit under General Preference Tariff even after January 2015.It is to be noted that Vietnam which was exporting less than our volume in the year 2009 have now increased its exports by two times of our volume and showing a steady growth rate, whereas, at the same time, our exports have come down by 31 per cent. We are now doubtful about our survival in the huge Canada market after loosing the competitiveness”, Mr. Sakthivel added.