Despite continuing wars and the Red Sea issue and India not taking any meaningful slice of Bangladesh’s market, India’s garment exports are rising. Exporters attribute this to mainly to the depletion of stocks with the buyers and many economies doing better.
India’s garment exports hit a peak of $16.71 billion in 2017-18. In April-October 2024, these exports were $8.7 billion, 11.6 per cent higher than the corresponding period of last year, raising hopes that 2024-25 could better the 2017-18 high.
Achieving record performance this year would have been a cinch if only India had had manufacturing capacities to take on jobs that would have normally gone to Bangladesh, which is in a socio-political wobble. India is playing catch-up with China and China-invested countries like Vietnam and Indonesia — the hope is that India will get a share of Bangladesh’s market, but that is for later.
Key markets
In the current year, the good growth is all because of better demand from the two big markets — US (11.5 per cent growth) and UK (7 per cent) — though there is also a bump-up in demand from smaller markets, such as the Netherlands (27 per cent) and Spain (18 per cent).
The April-October 2024 number is 4.7 per cent lower than the comparable period of 2022-23, a good year in which exports touched $16.19 billion, thanks to post-Covid demand. However, this year, the rising trend in exports is more sustainable. “Our capacity is booked till March,” says N Thirukkumaran of ESSTEE Exports, who is also the General Secretary of Tiruppur Exporters Association.
Sivaramakrishnan Ganapathi, V-C & MD of Gokaldas Exports, observes that immediately after the pandemic, the sudden resurgence in demand combined with a supply-demand mismatch between consuming and manufacturing hubs in Asia, scared retailers into stocking up. However, as demand subsided and inflation peaked, retailers faced high inventory levels, prompting them to reduce apparel imports, allowing existing inventory to sell naturally.
Falling imports
“This trend was evident in the declines in apparel imports by -22 per cent, -16 per cent, and -26 per cent in the US, EU-27, and UK, respectively, during 2023 equivalent to drawdowns witnessed during the pandemic,” Ganapathi said. Now, the decline in imports subsided in the H12024, with a recovery in the first two months of the third quarter of 2024.
“The pipeline inventories in the US and the other developed countries, which had ordered extra goods post-Covid, have now dried up. Hence, their imports are coming to a normal level,” Sanjay K Jain, Chairman of ICC National Expert Committee on Textiles, said.