India's Central Silk Commission Raises Production of Raw Silk in Five Years

According to the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-2017), India’s Central Silk Committee’s budget for supporting domestic silkworm production is Rs. 27,990 million, which is 2.5 times the budgeted amount of the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan”. . In 2011/2012, the output of raw silk in India reached 23,000 tons, an increase of 12.6% from the previous month.

The Central Silk Council of India (CSB) plans to double India’s domestic raw silk production in the next five to eight years, and the country’s raw silk production will reach 46,000 tons to meet the demand for silk production in India.

Europe, the United States and West Asia are the three major destinations for Indian silk exports. Affected by the European debt crisis and the weakness of the US economic recovery, India’s raw silk exports declined. In the first 11 months of 2011-2012, the export amount was Rs. 210.4 million, which was a decrease of 26.5% from the same period of the previous fiscal year. The value of India's silk exports during the same period of the previous fiscal year was Rs. 286.3 billion. At present, the Central Silk Committee is in talks with relevant parties in Brazil, Thailand, and Japan to negotiate technology transfer in the silk processing field, including the printing, dyeing, converting, and finishing technologies of silk fabrics.

The southern and northeastern states of India are the traditional silkworm production areas, while other species of silkworms, such as silkworm silkworms and ramie silkworms, are mainly distributed in Orissa and Jharkhand. The committee intends to support more emerging silk production regions, such as Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, while increasing the output of traditional silk production areas. By 2017, from the current 170,000 hectares to 850,000 hectares, the country will increase the planting area of ​​mulberry trees by five times.