Latin American market offers a lot of opportunities for Indian ready made garment exporters, said Rengaraj Viswanathan, a former Indian Ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay and also an expert on Latin America, here on Friday.
He was talking to The Hindu while here to attend a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Latin American buyers were showing tendency to source more from countries other than China which presently holds 50 per cent share of its import market, he said.
Domestic apparel production in Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela was shrinking, which in turn was paving way for more imports.
Mr. Viswanathan said that the Indian textile exporters can double the present volume of $1.5 billion to Latin America in another four years. The ready made garments export can go up from the present $450 million to $1 billion during the same period, if they make more interactions with the buyers there, and study the market carefully.
He said that the chances for Indian apparel exporters to succeed in Latin America were more because of the change in their mind set during the recent years.
Earlier, the exporters here had been concentrating only on the markets they understood.
Of late, they have shown interest to explore new markets, he said.
Mr. Viswanathan, who was India’s first Consul General to Brazil, was all of praise for the textile entrepreneurship in Tirupur knitwear cluster because the export growth from the area, according to him, happened even after they faced water and power shortages, and bureaucratic hassles.
