IIT Delhi conducts survey

Indian technical textile market is estimated to cross Rs.2 lakh crores by the year 2020-21 as its use become mandatory in many more formats, Minister of Textiles, Smriti Zubin Irani, told Rajya Sabha on 12 Dec 2019.

The market for 2017-18 is projected at Rs.116,217 crore base on a 2015 survey.

IIT Delhi has been assigned to conduct a fresh survey on technical textiles sector.

The Ministry has issued Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order dated 23 Oct 2019, prescribing minimum local purchase content for technical textiles items in 10 segments for government procurement.

The scope of use of technical textiles encompasses a wide range of applications such as; agro-textiles, medical textiles, geo-textiles, protection-textiles, industrial-textiles, sports-textiles and many other usages.

In India, technical textiles hold immense growth opportunities both for the industry as well as across various applications, Irani pointed out.

The Minister elaborated. The use of technical textiles have benefits of increased productivity in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture fields; better protection of military, paramilitary, police and security forces, stronger and sturdier transportation infrastructure for highways, railways, ports and airports and in improving hygiene and healthcare of general public, said the Minister.

Technical Textiles is the harbinger of many new age applications covering almost all walks of life and having immense potential for bringing in higher level of productivity, efficiency, cost economics; and offering innovative solutions to many engineering and general applications.

In addition to their commercial use, technical textiles have been identified for mandatory use across various important missions, programmes and schemes of the Government.

Some of these are National Health Mission, Jal Jivan Mission, National Horticulture Mission and infrastructure development of highways, railways and ports.

In order to boost a rapid growth of the technical textile segment in the country, the government has taken following major initiatives.

These include 207 technical textiles items have been brought under separate head in the Harmonised System of Nomenclature (HSN) code under the Foreign Trade Policy.

With a view to derive the benefits of technical textiles in various fields of applications, 92 application areas have been identified for mandatory use across 10 Central Ministries/Departments.

So far, mandatory use notifications have been issued for 68 applications.

Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has developed standards for 348 technical textiles products.

On request from the Industry, Ministry of Textiles has included 6 additional courses for technical textiles in its Skill Development Programme called Samarth. fiinews.com