Textile engineering industry, which contains of more than 2,800 units has shown a steady increase in the last five years.

According to R. Rajendran, president of Textile Machinery Manufacturers’ Association, all the spinning machinery manufacturers have a base in India and China now and these countries have slowly becoming a manufacturing hub for textile machinery.

S. Chakraborty, advisor of Textile Machinery Manufacturers’ Association, stated that the exports increased from Rs 1,523 crore in FY12 to Rs 2,466 crore in FY15.

Talking about the present scope for exports Rajendran commented that India is a major manufacturer of spinning and processing machinery and over here a huge amount of looms, knitting and garmenting machinery are imported by the textile industry.

Textile machinery like tools, accessories, garmenting, machinery and autoconersimports were Rs 7,643 crore in 2011-2012 and Rs 10,305 crore in 2015-2016.

This economic slowdown had affected investments by the domestic textile industry, investments continue in select pockets. Some States have come out with State-specific textile policies. Industries that focus on value addition, expansion, modernisation and replacements are driving investments in the domestic market. A lot of emphasis is given to the development of machinery for weaving and processing sector by the Union Government. It has supported loom development projects on public-private partnership mode and also cleared a project to set up a common engineering facility centre. As per Chakraborty, huge affection in investments are due to reduction in allocation of funds for Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme and backlog in payment of subsidies in the past.