Textiles Minister Santosh Gangwar has stated that the ministry will prepare the draft for new National Textiles Policy within the next 15 to 20 days. The current National Textile Policy 2000 was framed about 13 years ago. Therefore, there is a need to upgrade the existing policy as domestic textile industry has witnessed large scale modernisation and technological up-gradation in the last decade and faces new challenges.
The new policy aims to formulate a stable and fibre neutral raw materials guidelines to benefit the entire value chain and to address modernization and mechanization needs of the textile industry. The New Textiles policy also envisages enhancing the textile exports' market share globally from the current 4 percent and address concerns of adequate skilled work force, labour reforms. The new textile policy is also aimed to develop skilled work force, creating world class infrastructure for textile parks along with a conductive investment environment.
Textile industry plays significant role for economic development of the country in terms of net foreign exchange earnings, as well as through direct and indirect employment generation. Industry contributes around 4 percent to the gross domestic product (GDP), around 10 percent to the country’s export earnings and nearly 14 percent to industrial production besides providing direct employment to over 45 million people. The present market size of the industry stands at around $90 billion, which is expected to touch $220 billion mark by 2020.