India has questioned the World Trade Organisation and the US' calculation on its share in global textiles exports.

The US had approached the WTO saying India had achieved 'export competitiveness' in textile and apparel exports since the share of these items in global trade has exceeded 3.25 per cent of the total.

The US had argued that India should therefore either phase-out subsidies extended to textiles exports or face countervailing duties.

It had approached the WTO's committee on subsidies and countervailing measures along with item-wise data and sought data from India on the export of these items since 1996.

Officials said the issue had come up for discussion at the committee's meeting last month and India wanted to clarify if the calculations on world trade included regional and free trade agreements and generalised system of preferences schemes.

The WTO's SCM committee has replied by saying that the data supplied by the United Nations Statistics Division had been supplied by India.

The data, however, did not exclude the regional and free trade agreements and generalised system of preferences schemes.

Officials said the textiles ministry was going to submit the data while the WTO Secretariat will carry out its own set of exercises. They added that India was not providing any export subsidy to textiles exports.

"We will wait for the WTO Secretariat's calculations before firming up our strategy but it will have no bearing our exports as we do not provide an export subsidies on textiles," a senior official said.

The US in a representation to the WTO said that under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures India had met the definition of "export competitiveness" under the agreement in multiple textile and apparel categories.

"Export competitiveness in a product exists if a developing country member's exports of that product have reached a share of at least 3.25 per cent in world trade of that product for two consecutive calendar years," article 26.6 of the ASCM said.

Export competitiveness comes into force when either the developing country notifies the attainment of the prescribed level or is determined on the basis of a computation undertaken by the WTO secretariat at the request of a member.