Washington: The wages of Indian textile workers are the second lowest in the world, a media report has said.

An analysis of the wages of workers in a dozen textile-exporting countries by the 'Washington Post' yesterday (Nov 17, 2004) found that only Cambodian workers had wages lower than that of Indian workers.

According to the Post, India's annual export of textiles stood at $12.9 billion, with the worker being paid an average wage of $0.38 an hour. This was only bettered by Cambodia, which had an average wage of $0.32 an hour and exported $1.9 billion worth of textiles.

Pakistan, which exported textiles worth $12.3 billion, had a wage of $0.41 an hour, Sri Lanka with exports of $2.8 billion paid its workers at $0.48 per hour. China paid its workers in the industry at a rate of $0.68 an hour, exporting a mammoth $79.7 billion worth of textiles. The figures for Thailand stood at $0.91 and $6.1 billion.

The report which analysed the rates of the industry in India, Cambodia, China, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Jordan, Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, Turkey and Mexico also found that China topped the list of textile and apparel exporters to the United States, notching an impressive figure of $11.6 billion.

India came fourth after Mexico ($7.9 billion) and Hong Kong ($3.8 billion), exporting $3.2 billion worth of textiles to the US. Pakistan came tenth, with exports standing at $2.2 billion.