Union Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh on Thursday, 18 June 2026 shared data highlighting that the services sector has driven 67 per cent of India's export growth over the past decade — a figure that underscores how the country's trade story has shifted well beyond traditional goods such as garments and textiles.

Context

Posting via the NaMo App, Giriraj Singh shared a headline — 'Shirt se lekar software tak' ('From shirts to software') — pointing to a decade-long trend in which services exports, led by information technology and software, have outpaced merchandise trade in incremental growth. The minister's decision to amplify this data point is notable given his portfolio: as head of the Textiles Ministry, he oversees a sector that remains a cornerstone of India's goods-export basket, making his acknowledgement of services' dominance a candid policy signal.

India's services exports, particularly the IT-BPM (Information Technology and Business Process Management) segment, have expanded steadily since the liberalisation of the 1990s and gained further momentum after 2014. Official trade data in recent years show services accounting for over 40 per cent of total exports, frequently outpacing goods growth on a year-on-year basis.

Policy Backdrop

The decade in question coincides almost precisely with the tenure of the National Democratic Alliance government, which launched the flagship Make in India initiative in 2014 to boost manufacturing and diversify the export basket. The Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20 set explicit targets for expanding both goods and services trade, with a stated ambition of lifting India's share in global exports.

Despite the manufacturing push, the data now being cited suggest that software and services firms — rather than factories — delivered the larger share of incremental export earnings over this period. The Textiles Ministry has simultaneously pursued schemes such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) for textiles and the PM MITRA (Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel) parks programme to strengthen garment and fabric exports, which remain India's second-largest merchandise export category.

Stakeholders and Impact

The IT services industry, employing roughly 50 lakh professionals directly, emerges as the primary driver behind the statistic. Software exporters concentrated in hubs such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai have seen sustained demand from North America and Europe, insulating overall export figures even during periods of global goods-trade slowdown.

For textile exporters — the constituency most directly under Giriraj Singh's watch — the implication is a dual challenge: competing for policy bandwidth and investment alongside a services sector that has organically scaled, while also demonstrating that goods manufacturing can deliver comparable incremental value. Apparel and textile clusters in Tiruppur, Surat, Ludhiana, and Panipat will be watching whether this data point translates into renewed policy urgency around manufacturing competitiveness.

What's Next

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry is expected to release the next quarterly trade data, which will offer a more granular breakdown of services versus goods performance in the current fiscal year. Any revision to the Foreign Trade Policy — the current edition runs through 2030 — could recalibrate incentive structures to either sustain services momentum or tilt support toward manufacturing sectors including textiles.

The minister's post signals that the government is comfortable owning the services-led export narrative, even as it continues to invest in schemes designed to make India a global manufacturing hub. How that balance is struck in upcoming budget allocations and trade-policy reviews will be the key indicator to watch.