On behalf of the apparel export community, Garment Exporters Association has forwarded pre-budget recommendations to the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, to make Indian exports competitive in the global trade.

The recommendations include reduction of transaction costs, hike in duty drawback rates by five percent to ensure full refund of excise duties, custom duties, education cess and other central and state-level taxes. The association further sought reduction in interest at pre- and post-shipment levels and keep it capped at 7 percent. It asked the minister to continue the three percent interest rate subvention scheme for three more years that expired on March 31, 2014.

Since most of the competing economies allow import of garment and textile machinery without customs duty, the industry body appealed that even Indian government should not levy any customs duty on import of textile machinery and accessories. Implementation of GST (goods and service tax) must be the prime focus and it should be implemented immediately to simplify the present tax structure. It suggested that the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme should also get more funding to encourage upgardation of technology to improve productivity. To make Indian products competitive in the global market, the government also needs to allow duty-free access to yarns and fabrics, so that the final product prices could be kept under control.

Apart from the above recommendations, the association has also appealed to the government to make India, an easy to do business destination to attract more investments into the country, fixing of rupee value against the dollar so that exporters don’t suffer in-case of currency fluctuations and easing labour laws to improve labour productivity by granting ‘seasonal industry’ status to the garment export business.