It is reported by TIMES NEWS NETWORK that Indian textile industry's burgeoning capital goods imports to meet the growing business opportunity in the quota - free regime are reflected in the rising imports from UK in the last two years.

Textile machinery import stood at euro 11.5 million in 2005-06, a 80% jump over the previous year, according to Mr Alan Little, director, British Textile Manufacturing Association (BTMA), an apex body for textile trade in UK.

A strong player in synthetic textile machinery and also in textile testing equipments, UK textile majors have cast their eyes on the buoyant Indian market which is anticipated to widen its textile machinery off take.

Indian producers are under pressure to scale up the content of value addition in their manufacture in terms of quality and fabric innovation, he added. Mr Little who was here on Friday to inaugurate a one – day symposium on textile testing organised by BTMA said import of UK machinery into India would go up this year.

"With emphasis on quality control gaining, we look at the quality testing equipments as the future demand machinery item from India," said Mr Little.

To a query on the competitiveness of China's textile machinery sector as seen by India vis-a-vis the UK machinery, he said that one of the reasons for the invisibility of UK machinery in India might be the higher volume of imports of second hand machinery from China and Korea.

BTMA is organising the symposia for the first time in India across three cities – Mumbai, Tirupur and New Delhi. The earlier symposia were conducted in Turkey and Pakistan.

"This is the first step in promoting UK's textile machinery here and we are testing the Indian market before we could go ahead with our plans. We foresee a lot of demand from India in the coming years especially for the textile testing machinery," he added.