Tirupur: The Tirupur Exporters’ Association (TEA) has asked knitwear industrialists to increase prices by at least 10% for their export of garments to cope with the inflation in the industry. The decision was taken at the association’s executive committee meeting held recently in the city.Since last year, which witnessed the implementation of GST, cotton yarn, job-working services and accessories have become costlier. Cotton prices have gone up, at least by Rs 17-18 per kg, and the industrialists said cotton prices remained on the upswing, which is abnormal. So, they demanded the government to regulate the prices as it will affect them severely.In case of job-working services like fabric dyeing, the units have increased the prices at least by 20% due to increase in dyes and other products. On seeing the price hikes, many other related job-working units have increased their prices. Meanwhile, prices of accessories have also gone up.“With such situation, the continuation of same prices for finished garments would certainly lead to a difficult situation to sustain in the business. So, our executive committee unanimously decided to ask the knitwear units to send communication to their buyers to increase garment prices by 10% while finalising new orders,” said Raja M Shanmugham, president, TEA.“It was the first time that the association took such a decision because of the abnormal market situation prevailing now. We are not sure whether knitwear companies would take up the call (to increase prices) simply after the association’s suggestion. But the decision was taken to enlighten the companies to take a collective effort to persuade foreign buyers to provide reasonable prices,” he said."The inflation in processing services has put knitwear companies in a very tricky situation. Companies have been already hit hard by the failure of the government in providing GST refunds and other incentives. So, increasing in garment prices is inevitable, which should be understood by the buyers," said S Mahesh Kumar, a Tirupur-based knitwear unit owner.“Buyers would always have the upper hand and many of them would utilise the competition as ‘a threat factor’. Companies may agree to unreasonable prices impulsively. But it may lead to losses,” Shanmugham said.

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