Union Textiles Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday (4 November) said that it was time for India to target a five-fold increase in its annual technical textile exports to $10 billion in three years.

Addressing the representatives of the Indian Technical Textile Association in Delhi, Goyal said that the technical textiles segment has gained momentum in the last five years and is growing at 8 per cent per annum.

“Our aim is to hasten this annual growth to 15-20 per cent range during next 5 years,” Goyal was quoted in a report by the Financial Express.

The minister said that Centre would support PLIs for Textile Sector in states supporting development and offering affordable infrastructure for textile manufacturing like cheap land and power .

The central government had recently launched a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme worth Rs 10,683 crore to boost the manufacturing of technical textile items.

As per this scheme, incentives will be rolled out for five years for incremental production in 40 man-made-fibre (MMF) garments, 14 MMF-based fabrics and also 10 technical textile segments.

The government has set an ambitious target of $100 billion for garment and textiles exports in the next five years.

Goyal had also earlier called upon the industry to take advantage of the international market shift as China is trimming its market share in this labour-intensive segment.