With just less than a week to go for the Union Budget-2021, the yarn manufacturers of the region are demanding that the import duty on the man-made yarns be raised from 5-10% in order to safeguard the local yarn manufacturers, who are suffering due to high import duty on cheap quality of yarn, which costs way lower than the India-made yarns. 

Giving more information, Sanjay Garg, president of Northern India Textile Manufacturers Association (NITMA), said, “We deeply admire the vision of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ministries of finance and textiles for numerous initiatives taken to spur the domestic textile sector. In addition to all positive steps by the government there is an urgent need of raising customs duty on man-made yarns to 10%, which is currently at 5%. Based on the substantial data, there are huge issues being faced by the domestic man-made fibre (MMF) textile industry. The monthly average imports of virgin polyester spun yarn have increased by 972% in a span of fiver years (2015 to 2020). Besides this, imports from Vietnam alone have increased by a mammoth 10,512%, that is 107 times.”

Garg added that, “Another worrying indicator about the problems being faced by us is that average monthly imports of MMF for 2020 are 5,212 tonne per month out of the total domestic monthly consumption of 22,000 tonne per month, which means that imports enjoy 25% of the total market share, and what is even more alarming is that this trend is increasing with great speed. Import numbers have been rising substantially year after year due to an extremely unreasonably low prices offered by Indonesian and Vietnamese spinners on account of huge idle capacities created owing to their government’s incentives. Representations on the above have also been sent to the ministries of finance and textiles.” 

Sidharth Khanna of Adisudana Industries, another yarn manufacturer, “The man-made yarn sector, which is one of the largest employment generating segment within the textile industry and its highly capital and labour intensive industry as well. The unreasonably low-priced imports of man-made yarn into India have been causing considerable amount of injury to domestic manufacturers for the last five years or so. The industry has deep concerns over the rise in import quantities being dumped into India, which can potentially cause permanent damage to domestic thee MMF sector with a cascading effect, from closure of units to NPA’, and eventually resulting in huge employment loss.” 

He added that, “As a recapitulation, we appeal to the ministry of finance and ministry of textiles to consider increasing the customs duty on man-made yarn from its present level of 5% to 10% immediately in the ensuing Union Budget-2021 for the growth and expansion of domestic MMF industry and to prevent mass loss of employment.” 

Prior to this, the spinning industry had been demanding anti-dumping duty on the import of viscose spun yarn from China, Indonesia and Vietnam. After they took up the demand with the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), the department had taken this proposal with the central government.

Source: The Times Of India