The textile industry across the globe has been facing an unprecedented and prolonged slowdown from the second half of 2022 after witnessing a pent-up demand immediately after COVID lock down in almost all the textile manufacturing countries including East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, Europe, North and Central America and South America.
In a Press Release issued here, Dr. K. V. Srinivasan, the newly elected President of the 119-year-old International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF), Zurich, Switzerland, which is representing the entire textile value chain across the world has stated that the global textile industry has been facing unprecedented challenges. He has pointed out that ITMF’s latest Global Textile Industry Survey conducted in November 2023 and released in December 2023 revealed that weakening demand, inflation, geopolitical issues, raw material price volatility, steep increase in energy charges, shortage of labour and rising interest rates had been reported as the major root causes for the slowdown of the global textile industry. Weakening demand has been highlighted by 76% of survey respondents as the major cause for the poor performance of the industry.
Dr. Srinivasan has stated that around 44% of the respondents have reported some sort of cancellations of orders during the last four months, albeit only 5% reported major cancellations of 30% and more. Furthermore, he has stated that the survey also aimed at identifying the possibility of revival before May 2024. The survey revealed also that 44% of survey participants expect that in six months’ time the business situation will be more favourable, while 16% expect it to be less favourable. The balance of +28 percentage points (pp) in November is higher than the +20 pp in September.
