We analyze the impact of the elimination of textile and clothing (T&C) quotas in 2005 on India. Our simulations suggest that while Indian exports of T&C will continue to expand in the presence of the safeguards on China, they will be affected adversely once these safeguards are lifted. We argue that India could emerge much stronger and expand its trade in T&C at a much faster pace, if some of the key domestic structural weaknesses are overcome.

This book is a comprehensive examination of the Indian textile industry and the various determinants affecting its export performance, trends in labour, and capital productivity in the post-liberalization years. Employing 45 million people, including skilled and unskilled workers, the Indian textile and clothing industry occupies a significant position in the Indian economy in terms of industrial production, employment, and exports. This work traces the growth and expansion of this industry in the post-reform period and studies its contributions to the economic development of the nation. It discusses global trade agreements, India’s share in international exports, and its major trading partners across the globe including the USA, UK, UAE, Germany, China. It also provides recommendations to Indian policy makers for a possible improvement in the textile exports across the globe. The Textile Industry and Exports in Post-Liberalization India will be of interest to students and researchers of politics and international relations, economics, development studies, labour economics, sociology and social policy, and South Asian studies.

This book examines the textile and clothing Industry of India and its trade scenario from a global perspective. New developments in international policies related to trade and investment and falling barriers to trade worldwide as well as within individual regional communities have transformed the structure of production and global competition in the textile and apparel industries across the world. Furthermore, with the incorporation of textile trade in the GATT framework following the removal of quantitative restrictions, and the subsequent liberalization of investment opportunities, the Indian market is now home to several international brands, which has led to the present upsurge of FDI in this very important sector of the Indian economy. The book closely examines the nature and impact of such external changes on the industry’s structure and labour-related issues. The key feature of this book is that it presents a snapshot of all the domestic and international policies related to this sector, from the earliest relevant period to the present, and analyses the topical issues in significant detail. The book also offers some empirical analyses to show the impact of external changes on the concentration of firms in this industry and the regional inequalities that have emerged from regional variations in firms’ employment, labour-income and profit levels. Further, it addresses another striking feature, namely the role of preferential trading blocs or Regional Trading Arrangements (RTA) in creating trade-diverting effects related to this sector apart from the implications of foreign collaborations and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Many economists fear that the benefits of these RTAs for the partner countries are much greater than those for India, with net gains of incremental exports from India being small or even negative. This book discusses these critical issues in the context of India’s textile and apparel trade.

Global trade liberalization with regard to the readymade garments industry is a topic of highest relevance for the Bangladeshi economy and linked very strongly to its changing social structure. Garment industry actually is a very new, export-oriented sector of the Bangladesh economy. It was only some twenty years ago that this sector was fully established in Bangladesh. Today it has grown to the number eighteen exporter world-wide, employing some 1.8 million people directly, of whom most of them are women, and another 10 million indirectly. The main markets are the EU and NAFTA. The development of Bangladesh garments industry was facilitated by the different Multi Fibre Arrangements. Therefore--as many other new competitors have grown over the last couple of years, namely South and East Asian including China, the ASEAN, Mexico and 24 Caribbean countries--Bangladesh's garment industry will face a difficult period after 2004.

Trade Liberalization and Poverty in India attempts to capture the current dialogue on trade liberalization and poverty, and provides an overview of the poverty impact of trade liberalization in India. The impact of trade liberalization on poverty at the s

Examines the social, political and economic impacts of trade, paying particular attention to the textiles and clothing sector with respect to developing countries.