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Collaboration is the key in textile industry: PHDCCI
Agencies - New Delhi

Collaboration and “strategic relationships” is the key to increase competitiveness in the Indian textile sector, the PHDCCI has said.

Absence of collaboration within the textile and apparel supply chain in our country accounts for the weakness of the existing industries in this sector. According to PHDCCI, to preserve the Indian textile industry as well as to find it a place among the fore runners, the role of EPC’s from “quota broking” to “market support activities” has to be redefined. As nations would increase litigations to protect their domestic industry from unfair competition in the coming days, India needs to collect, maintain and analyse data about trade information within its boundaries and outside, it said. There is a need to deregulate the front end of the industry to allow for innovation and state-of-the-art innovation to happen which will result in strengthening the corporate character of the textile industry through proper policy initiatives, it said. Modification in labour legislation to facilitate growth in a congenial and globally competitive environment and narrowing the disparity between organised and disorganised labour is also needed, it said. To salvage the long-term interest and growth of the industry, non-viable enterprises, irrespective of their ownerships, should be permitted to close down, it said.

The PHDCCI has also recommended creation of a technology upgradation fund for specific sectors of SSIs in line with the existing textile modernisation fund. The regional chamber, while recommending these measures in its paper on ‘Facilitation of growth of SSI in India’, said this fund could be utilised for setting up of a technology bank. This will help to revitalise the small scale industries and improve competitiveness of this sector which has been adversely affected due to WTO and its policies relating to liberalisation, it said, adding as many as 40,000 small and medium units have been closed and about 40 lakh workers have been rendered jobless in recent years.

The PHDCCI said that for effective technological upgradation in the domestic SSI units, a partnership approach to develop linkages between large and small enterprises should be strengthened. Further policies and programmes for technology upgradation need to be geared up not only at the central level but also by the associations.