HS code for technical textiles soon: ITTA

Around 300 products under the category of technical textiles will soon be classified by getting Harmonised System (HS) code, a top official of the Indian Technical Textiles Association (ITTA) said today.
ITTA has approached the government for classification of the products and a committee has been formed to identify the products to give HS code, ITTA Chairman Pramod Kumar Khosla said here.
Speaking at a conference on 'Technical Textiles - The enormous emerging opportunity', jointly organised by CII and ITTA, Khosla said without this HS code, the technical textiles sector was facing serious problems, including litigation.
Once the classification was made, manufacturers can concentrate on these products, he said.

Since there are nearly 750 companies engaged in technical textile manufacturing in India and the sector expected to reach a market size of Rs 1,58,540 crore by 2016-17, ITTA has also sought rationalisation of duties on the specialty fiber, Khosla said.
Since there are 12 categories of the sector, such as agri-tech, geo-tech, build-tech and cloth-tech, there is a need to have separate policy for the groups, he said.

He appealed to Tamil Nadu government to come out with a separate policy for the sector as in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
All the segments in the sector are recording double digit growth, with medical textiles witnessing 14 per cent growth, he said.

Every car requires at least seven kgs of technical textiles and there is tremendous potential in the automobile sector, Khosla said.
He added that with nearly 1.5 million soldiers, the requirement of defence force was huge since they need materials for trenches, apart from covers for tanks, planes and missiles.