Indian Textile Industry – SWOT Analysis

The Indian Textile Industry

The Indian textile industry is one of the leading textile industries in the world. Though it used to come under unorganized sector few years back, the scenario changed dramatically after the economic liberalization of the Indian economy. Liberalisation gave the much-needed push to the textile industry, which has now successfully become one of the largest in the world.As per the last statistics available from the Annual Report 2009-10 of the Ministry of Textiles, “The Indian textile industry contributes about 14 per cent to industrial production, 4 per cent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 17 per cent to the country’s export earnings.” Additionally, it provides direct employment to over 35 million people and is the second largest provider of employment after agriculture.

The report further says “The current domestic market of textile in India is expected to increase up to US$ 60 billion by 2012 from the current US$ 34.6 billion. The share of exports is also expected to increase from 4% to 7% within 2012.” Textile Accessories are also an important part of this segment.

Strengths of the Indian Textile Industry

India’s biggest strength lies in its big pool of cheap and talented workforce. However, apart from it there are few other important factors which contributes to its strength like

• Huge Domestic Market consumption (due to its own population).
• Tremendous Export Potential (Indian products are in great demand among the western importers)
• The new age creative and risk taking entrepreneurs.
• Use of latest technology which produces high quality multi-fiber raw material.
• Supportive government policies.

The Indian Textile Industry has its fair share of weakness like:

• The increased global competition due to WTO policies.
• Use of outdated manufacturing technology from the low end suppliers.
• Inefficient supply chain management.
• Additionally, this sector is still unorganized at many levels and needs a lot of government reforms for further improvisation.

Opportunities

The western countries are now setting up their manufacturing units in India which single handedly opens up a wide array of possibilities for all the stakeholders within the textile industry.

Experts believe that the golden era of Chinese textile and apparel exports is over and the production base of global textiles is gradually shifting from China to India, Pakistan and other low cost destinations.

Threats:

Even though experts claim that China is past its glorious days, still one cannot afford to take china lightly and has to keep in mind the capability of Chinese exporters to supply quality products at cheap prices. Indian textile exporters cannot afford complacency and need to be on their toes for any changes within the international trade community.

Final Thought:

Global textile production has witnessed the growth of an astounding 25 percent (including the Textile Accessories ) in the last decade. Asian markets will continue to spearhead the growth of the textile industry in the years to come and the textile industry could go beyond the current $500 billion mark any time soon.