Dip in China's share an opportunity for India apparel trade with Japan

During Upnext India 2023, Naren Goenka, chairman, Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), said that China has witnessed a decline in its apparel exports in the past five years giving significant advantage to India. Goenka was speaking after inaugurating the first edition of Upnext at Apparel House, Gurugram on Friday. Goenka said, “China has been a dominant garment supplier to Japan but after a trend of decline, garment fraternity in India and Japan have geared up to increase this trade taking advantage of duty-free access for Indian garments post Indo-Japan CEPA agreement as against an approximate 9 per cent for China and Turkey.” After having established itself in traditional garments, the Indian apparel industry has now moved on to diversifying itself into newer areas of MMF garments, he added.

Upnext India is an initiative in the form of a series of Reverse Buyer-Seller meet, which started with the first such event with Japan, which was held on February 10-11, 2023. Upnext India was organised by AEPC and supported by India’s ministry of commerce and industry under the Market Access Initiative (MAI) Scheme. 84 prominent Japanese buyers, including trading companies and retail chains/stores, were in India to source their requirement from the 112 Indian exhibitors who displayed the diverse range of apparel, reflecting Japanese taste. Some of the iconic Japanese brands including Koizumi Apparel Co. Ltd, Marubeni Intex, X Plus Co. Ltd, AIS Xo. Ltd, Indepp Co. Ltd, Aube Co. Ltd, Sumitomo Corporation Kyushu Co. Ltd, Oyoshima & Co. Ltd, Yagi, Muji, Amina Collection Co. Ltd, United Arrows Ltd, Konaka, Nissenken Quality Evaluation Centre etc attended the show. Indian companies displayed the various categories of garments, including summer and winter collections.

During a panel discussion, Goenka, said, “Japan is the 4th largest readymade garment (RMG) importer in the world. India has a huge untapped trade potential in the RMG sector and also a duty-free access to the Japanese market, that is why India must extensively and aggressively focus on building India-Japan trade.” The government of India is coming up with a PLI scheme which will majorly include RMG. This PLI will have much simpler norms to be eligible, which will largely address the issue of capacity creation, Goenka added.

Sudhir Sekhri, vice chairman, AEPC said, “Japanese companies have two competitive advantages as apparel sourcing base: sourcing cost and flexibility and agility. Indian suppliers can cater to both small size customised orders of 300 pieces to large orders as huge as 3 lakh pieces of one style.” Apparel imports into Japan have witnessed a positive uptick in the last three years despite of COVID-19 which allows India’s apparel industry a huge opportunity.”

Ashok G Rajani, chairman, Fairs and Exhibition, AEPC said, “Upnext India looks forward to building bridges of partnerships between the Indian exporter community and buyers worldwide starting with Japan. This Japan focused 2023 edition of the Reverse Buyer-Seller Meet hosted interested apparel and fashion accessories exporters, providing them a platform to engage with Japanese brands and buyers. We look forward to enabling Japanese brands to plan for greater sourcing from India through this event.”

The two days of Upnext India 2023 also hosted theme pavilions for the startups in technology and sustainability domain, two very crucial areas where Indian garment industry is making rapid transformations. Japan imported RMG worth $23 billion in 2022 (till November), of which India exported RMG worth $0.22 billion to Japan with a share of 0.9 per cent. This depicts that there is a huge scope for the Indian apparel manufacturers and Japanese RMG importers to bridge the gap and write a new chapter for the India-Japan apparel trade.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KUL)