Tech textile may grow 20% annually for next 2 yrs

The country's technical textiles sector, which is currently pegged at USD 13 billion, is expected to grow at 20 per cent per annum in the next two years.
"We see a huge potential of the technical textiles sector, which is currently USD 13 billion in size and expected to grow at 20 per cent per annum in the next two years. With imports touching USD 5 billion, India needs to develop indigenous products to boost domestic growth," Shishir Jaipuria, Chairman, FICCI Committee on Textiles and Technical Textiles, said at Technotex 2014 here.
Highlighting on the theme for this year which is 'accelerating technical textile usage and strengthening institutional buying', Jaipuria said that technical textiles has a major role to play in the growth of the overall textiles sector in India.

Calling it the next sunrise sector for India, Zohra Chatterjee, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, gave a detailed insight into the vision of the government for the technical textiles sector. The government is looking at a five-fold increase in the fund outlay for the sector during the 12th Five Year Plan. A major initiative will also be to drive up the growth of the sector in the north-eastern states.
A pilot scheme budgeted at Rs 500 crore has also been proposed for geo textiles. There are also plans to hike the FDI for this sector. The government has already launched an integrated skill development scheme to train 15 million people in this field by 2020, Chatterjee said.

Sujit Gulati, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, said that this year Technotex aims to build and enhance the 'investment' environment for the technical textiles sector in the country. He threw light on the initiatives of the government focused around promotion of technical textiles in India.

Gulati highlighted a few schemes, starting with the four centres of excellence that were doubled to eight in the Technology Mission programme of 2010, along with encouraging entrepreneurs and start-ups to take part in this sector.
The government aims at strengthening research in this field, organising buyer seller meets, providing a national policy framework and also promoting the agro technical textiles in the north eastern states where two demonstration centres are already underway, to showcase the benefits and usage of technical textiles, especially natural fibres.

To generate skilled manpower, the subject has also been made part of the curriculum in schools and colleges through the intervention of the Indian Textiles Association (ITA).
Technotex aims to provide the further roadmap for the industry to explore the repository of technical textiles in India, Gulati said.