The Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman, has announced a proposal to set up a National Technical Textiles Mission with a four-year implementation period from 2020-21 to 2023-24 at an estimated outlay of Rs. 1480 crore to position India as a global leader in Technical Textiles. In her Budget speech she said that India imports significant quantity of technical textiles worth USD 16 billion every year.
Technical textiles are material and products manufactured primarily for their technical properties and functional requirements rather than for aesthetic characteristics. 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. Use of technical textiles have benefits of increased productivity in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture fields, better protection of military, para-military, police and security forces, stronger and sturdier transportation infrastructure for highways, railways, ports and airports and in improving hygiene and healthcare of general public. In India, technical textiles hold immense growth opportunities both for the industry as well as across various applications.
In terms of the projections of the last baseline survey on technical textiles submitted in 2015, the market size in India for the year 2017-18 is projected as Rs 1,16,217 crore. Although, there is no projection in the last baseline study with regard to the projections for the 2020-21, taking into account the current trend of growth and various initiatives of the Government, domestic market size of the technical textiles is expected to cross Rs 2 lakh crores by the year 2020-21.