India ups share in leather garment & footwear trade.

Though there was only a marginal increase in India’s share in global leather trade in the past four years, Indian footwear and garment exports have shown significant progress by being among the top three nations recording fastest growth during the period.

The global import of leather and leather products were up from $120 billion in 2006 to $138 billion in 2010, growing at a cumulative annual growth rate of 3.63 per cent. While India accounted for a share of 2.79 per cent, country’s share has marginally increased from 2.56 per cent in 2006. China’s share saw a rise to 30 per cent in 2010 from 24 per cent in 2006, according to Council for Leather Exports (CLE) data quoting Geneva-based international trade centre.

China and Italy were largest exporters of leather products accounting for 30 per cent and 13 per cent share respectively in global import trade in 2010. With 2.79 per cent share, India was the 7th largest exporter. USA was the largest importer of leather products in the world accounting for 19.26 per cent share ($26.57 billion) in global leather import trade.

“Though overall share of India in the global leather industry trade has declined to 2.79 per cent in 2010 from 2.90 per cent in 2009, the value of exports has increased to $3.8 billion in 2010 when compared to $3.4 billion in 2009,” D Saalai Maraan, executive director, CLE told Financial Chronicle.

“The decline in India’s share in global trade (when compared with 2.90 per cent in 2009) may be attributed to the continuing crisis in Europe, the largest market of India”, he added.

In global footwear exports, China, India and Vietnam are the fastest growing nations. While China has registered 40 per cent growth in exports at $9.4 billion in 2010 when compared with 2006 numbers, India has recorded 50 per cent rise in footwear exports at $1.5 billion during the period. India was the 9th largest nation in footwear exports.

“Footwear, the main commodity of Indian leather exports, is already showing a positive growth of exports with its global share increasing year after year. With the announcement of mega leather clusters by the government of India, we hope the manufacturing capacity will further be strengthened to meet the global demand,” said Maraan.

In leather garments, India and France were the only nations that reported strong double digit growth in 2010 when compared with 2006. India’s garments exports were up 29 per cent at $401 million in 2010 when compared with 2006 value. India was the third largest leather garment exporter after China ($871 million) and Italy ($564 million) in 2010.

“The mega leather cluster scheme has been notified by the Centre and the allocation for the scheme is Rs 600 crore. This is indeed a landmark scheme for the leather industry. I hope that such new initiatives will culminate in creation of world-class production centres in the next 3-5 years,” M Rafeeque Ahmed, chairman, CLE, said.

Source : mydigitalfc.com