Mexico offers a lot of potential for Indian apparel exporters: Indian ambassador

New Delhi, Feb 17 (KNN) Indian ambassador to Mexico Manpreet Vohra said the bilateral trade between the two countries is on a rising trend and that there is huge potential for growth of Indian apparel exports to Mexico.

Speaking at ‘India-Mexico Synergies in Apparel and Textiles’, a virtual B2B meeting organized by Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) and Embassy of India, Mexico City, Mexico, on Tuesday evening, Vohra said that the bilateral trade has grown 46 per cent to about 10 billion dollar since 2014.

“Mexico is now India’s largest trading partner in Latin America and the second largest in entire America after the USA and having overtaken Canada and Brazil. Our trade is also fairly well balanced with only about 1 billion dollar in India’s favour,” Vohra added.

The Ambassador said that one of the most important products in the bilateral trade basket is garments and textiles, and for which India is among Mexico’s top suppliers. In 2019, Mexico imported 381 million dollar worth of textiles and clothing items from India.

“However, there is much more room for growth borne out by the fact that in 2019 Mexico imported over 10.7 billion dollar worth of garments and textiles from all over the world. Even 2020 data shows from January to November that despite the pandemic Mexico has still imported 7.9 billion dollar of these items. India therefore can surely increase its share in the import matrix of Mexico,” the envoy said.

India is one of the leading manufacturers and exporters of high quality and competitively priced garments and textiles, he said and added that the size of India’s domestic market alone is 100 billion dollar. Further, he said that both the domestic market size and India’s share in global apparel trade, currently 5 per cent, are likely to triple by 2024-25.

“More than 600 companies in India are certified to produce high quality Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) today. Global market for this is expected to be over 92 billion dollar by 2025 up from only 52 billion dollar in 2019. This is another good opportunity for Indian and Mexican companies to collaborate,” the India’s envoy in Mexico said.

AEPC Chairman Dr A Sakthivel said, “At the start of the coronavirus pandemic in India in March, the production of medical textiles in the country was zero. Within 30 days with the help of Hon’ble Minister of Textiles Smt Smriti Zubin Irani and our exporters, the production of medical textiles began. And, by June India became the world’s second largest manufacturer of medical textiles.”

The Chairman further said that cotton garments account for 85 per cent of India’s total apparel exports while the global market is exactly the opposite with 85 per cent trade in man made fibre (MMF) garments and 15 per cent cotton garments. On our request, the Government has now started a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. For this, they have identified 40 HS codes for MMF garments and 10 HS codes for technical textiles,” Dr Sakthivel said.

Sudhir Sekhri, Chairman (Export Promotion), AEPC, said, “Of the 10 top apparel products that are being exported from India to Mexico only one item is a MMF fabric, all other items are cotton fabrics. This is where the gap is and where we see growth.”