India’s textile and apparel sector—including handicrafts—showed notable resilience in the first half of FY 2025–26, posting steady performance despite muted global demand and tariff pressures in key destinations. Overall exports of textiles, garments and made-ups grew 0.1% year-on-year during April–September 2025.
Official data shows India recorded export growth in 111 international markets, underscoring the sector’s widening global footprint. These markets together generated $8.49 billion in export earnings during the six-month period, up from $7.72 billion a year earlier—an increase of 10%, or $770 million in absolute terms.
Several major destinations registered healthy growth, including the UAE (14.5%), UK (1.5%), Japan (19%), Germany (2.9%), Spain (9%) and France (9.2%). Strong momentum was also seen in non-traditional markets such as Egypt (27%), Saudi Arabia (12.5%) and Hong Kong (69%), reflecting India’s expanding reach beyond its conventional buyers.
Among key product categories, Ready-Made Garments remained a significant driver with 3.42% growth, while jute products posted a 5.56% rise.
Officials said the broad-based performance highlights the industry’s ability to adapt to shifting global demand patterns, while also validating the government’s efforts to push export diversification, value addition and deeper integration into global supply chains under the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ frameworks.
