Sudeep Malu, managing director of Sumatex Limited

The Indian textile industry that was unorganised a few years back received an impetus after the liberalisation of the economy in 1991. Opening up of the economy gave the much-needed push to the industry, which has now successfully become one of the largest industries in the world. The Indian textile industry's contribution to industrial production, GDP and export income stands at 14%, 4% and 16.63% respectively. The textile sector is one of the major generators of employment opportunities and is expected to create 12 million new jobs this year. The sector is aiming to get foreign direct investments worth US$6 billion in the next 5 years, which it intends to spend on textiles equipment, fabric and garment manufacturing.

The textile engineering industry is the backbone of the textile industry, which helps to bring about innovation. Textile engineering industry also contributes significantly to the GDP of the country by generating huge employment opportunities.

The Indian Textile Engineering Industry (TEI) is over 50 years old and comprises 1446 units, of which, 598 units manufacture complete machinery and the remaining units are involved in manufacturing machine parts and accessories. TEI provides direct employment to a major chunk of the country’s population.

Strength of Indian TEI

The Indian TEI boasts of a huge production base with a wide range of machinery being manufactured in the country. There are a large number of accessory manufacturers using latest technologies to manufacture equipment. The country’s TEI also boasts of highly skilled and well-trained technical workforce who assist their respective companies to roll out high quality products and undertake bulk consignments.

Flipsides

However, a major drawback in the Indian TEI is that it thrives on borrowed technology. There has been a dearth of in-house R&D activities. The manufacturing units are scattered and located in different parts of the country. There has been lack of constant demand for machinery from the domestic textile industry. The complete range of latest processing machinery is also not available.

The Union government needs to provide adequate funds for the development of the Indian TEI. Owing to irregular tax structure, there is no level playing field for domestic manufacturers as compared to their global counterparts.

Vision 2010

In its Vision Statement released recently for the year 2010, following investment projections for textile equipment have been made by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI):