RIYADH, 5 November 2006 — A 22-member delegation from the Synthetic & Rayon Textiles Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC) will hold an Indian textile road show here on Nov. 12 and 13. The event is part of a buyer-seller meeting to beef up the country’s textile exports to the Kingdom, which stood at $360 million this year.
Azar A.H. Khan, first secretary (Economic and Commercial) at the Indian Embassy, told Arab News that leading Indian companies will display the latest range of textile products including suits, shirts, dress materials, embroidered fabrics and high fashion fabrics, home furnishings, scarves, abayas, shawls and other material, besides yarns of manmade fibers and blends.
According to the official, Saudi-Indian trade remains strong at the macro level, with the two-way trade standing at around $3.44 billion. India ranks as the fourth largest producer of man-made fibers in the world with a massive production-cum-distribution base for textiles. Indian man-made fiber textiles are exported to 176 countries, with the highly sophisticated European market accounting for 22 percent of the total exports, followed by the US. The Middle East, Khan pointed out, accounts for 32 percent of the exports. The export of synthetic and blended textiles from India has nearly doubled in the past five years from over $ 1.14 billion in 1999-2000 to $ 2.15 billion last year.
