As predicted by early media, the epidemic in India has developed completely out of control. Recently, according to Indian media reports, India has reported more than 3.1 million new confirmed cases in April this year alone. Recently, it has once again set a record for the highest number of confirmed cases in a single day. India has added more than 314,000 new cases of COVID-19 in 24 hours. It has even caught up with the United States, which ranks first in confirmed cases in the world, and has become the country with the largest single-day increase in the world.
As the epidemic situation in India becomes increasingly severe, India’s medical and health system has now collapsed. India has become the country with the second largest number of confirmed cases in the world. Faced with the severe impact of the epidemic, India may adopt a more stringent blockade policy to deal with it.
In this regard, Indian market participants are worried that India will “repeat the same mistakes” and repeat the widespread economic contraction caused by the epidemic blockade in 2020, and the wave of textile industry processing and manufacturing shutdowns will continue. The textile industry chain that shifted from India to China is difficult to “take back”.
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The worries of Indian market participants are not unreasonable. India is the world’s largest cotton producer and the largest jute producer. The textile industry is in It plays a vital role in India’s economy.
According to public information, as the world’s second largest textile producer, India has a large population and has the advantage to develop intensive industries. India accounts for nearly 25% of the world’s yarn production capacity and nearly one-third of the world’s output. It is the second largest silk producer in the world. Textiles are one of India’s major foreign exchange earners, accounting for about 15% of India’s exports.
As a traditional industry, the Indian textile industry has continued to develop in recent years. In 2019, the size of the Indian textile and apparel market was huge, reaching US$150 billion, and some experts predict that it will reach US$250 billion in the future, a market size of over one trillion yuan.
According to statistics, in 2019, 121 million direct and indirect jobs were created, which is The second largest provider of jobs in India after agriculture. The output value of the textile industry accounts for approximately 2% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP), and it attracted nearly US$3 billion worth of foreign investment into the Indian market from 2000 to 2018.
However, the development of India’s textile industry has been pressed on the pause button in the face of the epidemic. After the outbreak of the epidemic in early 2020, India was forced to adopt measures to close down the entire country. Under the epidemic, India’s “lockdown” caused an economic “shutdown” for as long as three months. A large number of industries in India have been hit hard, and the Indian economy continues to be sluggish under the epidemic.
This has also severely hit the textile industry that relies on labor, and a large number of orders have been lost. Moreover, due to the suspension of transportation, many ports in India were shut down, and more than 50,000 large containers were stranded. Because there was no way to resume work and production, a large number of international orders that India had received could not be delivered in time, resulting in heavy losses.
Judging from the specific performance of the market, a large number of small and medium-sized textile companies’ orders were canceled or were unable to accept orders, which led to the start-up Rates have fallen, profits and income have shrunk significantly, and even companies have gone bankrupt, and unemployment has continued to rise. Coupled with the uncertainty of the development of the epidemic, more large orders from European and American countries have been canceled or transferred to other countries, or shipments have been delayed indefinitely, causing the situation in the Indian textile industry to become more severe.
According to data released by the United Nations in mid-2020, in just half a year, India’s total trade loss was close to US$400 million, of which the textile and clothing industry lost approximately US$64 million.
Furthermore, after the global outbreak of the epidemic, the raw material supply of the Indian textile industry is faced with the dilemma of being interrupted. Looking for alternative sources of raw materials may increase the cost of finished products. The impact of the increase on sales is clear. In addition, the quality of textiles may also be affected by this change, leaving the entire industry in a passive state.
At the same time, India’s textile exports have also been affected by the epidemic. Because the current epidemic situation in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States is still very serious, and it is far from reaching the prevention and control goals, and these places are the main markets for Indian clothing exports, which puts Indian textile exports under severe challenges.
The epidemic is having a serious impact on the Indian economy. Since the epidemic subsidies provided by the Indian government have not yet been paid out on time, corporate orders have dropped significantly due to the epidemic, making survival difficult, which may directly lead to the layoffs of nearly 10 million people in the Indian textile industry.
What India did not expect was that China, which took the lead in preventing and controlling the epidemic, became its strong competitor in the textile industry. Amid the raging epidemic, India’s trillion-dollar business “ceded to” China.
Since the second half of 2020, China’s textile and apparel industry has reversed the sluggish trend in the early stages of the epidemic and entered a new round of outbreak. According to data, the national clothing and footwear sales from January to December 2020:p>
Under the impact of the global epidemic and geopolitics, the current international trade environment is even worse and the international competition is more intense. In the post-epidemic era, the global textile industry has restarted its recovery. Still challenged. From the perspective of challenges, there are both short-term pressures and long-term challenges.
The epidemic is still raging around the world, the world economy has fallen into a great recession, trade protectionism continues to rise, geopolitical conflicts continue to deepen, and the foundation for the recovery of various industries is not yet solid. International industries The chain supply chain pattern has undergone profound adjustments, and uncertain and unstable factors have suddenly increased.
For example, despite the impact of the epidemic, politics and other factors in the United States, the European Union, India, Myanmar, Bangladesh and other countries, textile exports have rebounded, but they have not yet recovered due to the epidemic. Return to previous levels, and, judging from the reality of the epidemic, future recovery will take time.
In 2020, U.S. clothing and apparel retail sales decreased by 26% year-on-year, approaching US$200 billion; EU textile retail sales decreased by 24.4% year-on-year %. From the perspective of the international market, the international clothing consumer market has suffered an overall setback, and the number of clothing imports from the United States and the European Union has also declined.
Although India gradually relaxed control measures on June 30, 2020 and announced that it has entered the “Unblocking 2.0” stage, the current epidemic situation is out of control and it is encountering a crisis of supply chain interruption. It will still take time for the Indian textile industry to fully resume its previous economic activities, and there is no way to do it in a short time.
Since the turmoil in Myanmar on February 1 this year, Myanmar’s economy has basically been in a state of shutdown or even regression, and it has suspended exports. Myanmar’s textile and apparel industry is facing huge problems caused by the turmoil, which has forced some large international clothing brands to announce the suspension of all domestic orders in Myanmar and look for other countries to replace orders.
Today, because the textile industry plays an important pillar role in Myanmar’s economy, the huge problems faced by Myanmar’s textile industry have an extremely serious impact on the country’s economy.
At the same time, Bangladesh, which has the world’s second largest textile industry after China, has been developing well. The textile industry is Bangladesh’s main source of export revenue, but the epidemic has also caused some of its country’s orders to be transferred to China.
Since April 5 this year, Bangladesh has implemented a nationwide “city lockdown” in response to the worsening COVID-19 epidemic. According to statistics, in 2019 alone, Bangladesh exported textiles mainly to European and American countries, with a value of up to 130.1 billion US dollars.
At present, the contradictions and problems accumulated over a long period of time in China’s textile industry are relatively prominent. Under the new global transformation situation, China’s textile industry must maintain its traditional competitive advantages and find new competitive advantages. , creating a more complete and highly intelligent industrial chain is a necessary means for sustainable development of the industry.
The current Sino-US and European relations are in an uncertain stage. The United States and other Western countries are creating hot spots of public opinion on my country’s Xinjiang cotton, which has affected my country’s Xinjiang cotton export trade. In fact, Western countries are really targeting China’s textile industry. Now foreign companies have stopped exporting raw materials to my country. They want to use this to curb China’s development.
Despite this, our country’s determination to expand opening up and economic development will not waver. What is worth looking forward to is that China’s textile and apparel industry is looking for new market growth points, such as RCEP and countries along the “One Belt and One Road”, to promote the steady development of China’s textile and apparel industry, and initial results have been achieved.
In the post-epidemic era, epidemic prevention and control and repeated turmoil in international relations have had a profound impact on various industries. Global resources are accelerating the structure and reorganization, the textile industry in various countries around the world has restarted recovery, and the important strategy of each country has turned to improving the stability and competitiveness of the industrial supply chain.
At a time when mankind is facing many challenges and the world is undergoing major changes unseen in a century, globalization has accelerated the development of the textile industry around the world, and the sustainable development of the industry has become Crucial. This requires vigorously advocating trade globalization around the world, resolutely resisting trade protectionism, and constantly innovating in the field of sustainable development. </p
