Leather, footwear sector seeks duty relief as Middle East crisis drives up input costs

India’s leather and footwear manufacture is struggling with precocious input costs owed to the ongoing Middle East situation and is seeking import work exemptions connected indispensable earthy materials, machinery and components.

Industry representatives person taken up the contented with the commerce and manufacture ministry, informing that the disruption has sharply raised the outgo of respective important inputs by 40 to 60%."The manufacture is facing a crisp summation successful earthy worldly and input costs - rising by 40-60% - owed to the West Asia crisis," an authoritative told PTI."In presumption of this, we person urged the authorities to supply import work exemptions connected captious inputs specified arsenic synthetic leather (PU-coated fabrics), footwear components, metallic accessories, leather and footwear machinery, threads, moulds, toed puffs, eyelets, definite leather chemicals and packaging materials."Alongside work relief, exporters person recommended the aboriginal execution of the projected FLOAT (Footwear and leather oriented transformation) scheme, with sum extending crossed the afloat leather and footwear merchandise chain, including earthy materials, machinery and inputs.The manufacture has besides pressed for duty-free imports of crust and finished leather arsenic portion of efforts to fortify home manufacturing.

A large interest for the assemblage is the interaction of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has affected lipid and state vas movement. Since products specified arsenic PU leather, definite rubber chemicals, adhesives, plastics and footwear soles are petroleum-based, proviso disruptions person pushed costs importantly higher.Apart from petroleum-linked materials, the home manufacture besides relies connected imports from China, Korea, Indonesia and Japan for respective inputs.Imports successful the assemblage fell 4.49% year-on-year to $938 million.On the export front, leather and leather merchandise shipments declined 2.36% year-on-year to $4.26 cardinal successful 2025-26. However, according to manufacture estimates, full exports could emergence to $5.6 cardinal erstwhile non-leather goods figures are added.Overall exports from the sector, covering finished leather, leather footwear, footwear components, leather garments, leather goods, saddlery and harness, non-leather footwear, non-leather goods, and fur and fur products, reached $5.57 cardinal successful 2024-25, compared to $5.38 cardinal successful 2023-24 and $6 cardinal successful 2022-23.