Noida’s garment export industry is seeing a slowdown. It has got only about 40 per cent of its usual volume of orders from the US for the back to school season. Noida is known as an apparel city. It accounts for 15 to 20 per cent of India’s garment exports. There are some 800 garment exporters operating over 4,000 units and employing over six lakh people. Major importers of Noida's garments are labels like Zara, Mango, Tesco and the products are largely sent to Brazil, US, Canada, Europe, England.

These garment exporters were already hit by a slowdown in 2016. Over 60 to 70 per cent of Noida’s garment exporters do not have orders from anywhere in the world after March 2017. Demonetization brought about systemic changes in business operations and added to costs. Existing orders have slowed down and the worry is that export orders may shift to Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia.

Worldwide, importers are taking a wait and watch approach towards India because they are wondering if Indian exporters will be able to deliver at all. Meanwhile plans are on to develop an apparel cluster on the Yamuna Expressway in Noida which will involve an overall investment to the tune of Rs 300 crores. More than 100 factories will be set up in the land cluster spanning 200 acres generating jobs to lakhs of people.