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Production of appropriate machinery

Though the domestic textile engineering sector has made some recovery in the recent months, there is still a long way to go before it generates enough demand for itself. The capacity utilisation has yet to reach the viable level. During the Ninth plan, the utilisation of the industry was hovering around 30-45 per cent, out of the total installed capacity of Rs 35,000 crore. During the plan period, the sector could only meet 30-40 per cent of the domestic textile industry’s requirement. In fact, till 1991-92 the sector was meeting over 80 per cent of the domestic demand. This reflects that there is a huge scope of recovery. Currently, the entire range of machinery required for spinning is manufactured by the sector. However, in the absence of economically-viable demand in the past, it has failed to build up enough capacity to produce modern weaving, knitting, processing and garmenting machines.

In fact, the entire industry calls for some re-orientation and change in strategy looking at the future market trend. The industry, in the past few years, has failed to bring about necessary changes in their product range as also market strategies. It is high time that the industry focuses on R&D in joint ventures and manufactures machinery as per the requirements of the consumer industry. This will call for constant interaction among machinery players, textile units and textile research associations. The sector no longer can afford to work in isolation as it has been doing in the past. The textile machinery sector will have to produce machinery which is competitive in terms of technology as well as cost in order to persuade the domestic textile industry to source their machinery locally rather than importing them. Moreover the sector will have to access the potential of indigenous requirement of each machinery so that, it can decide whether the quantum of requirement is equivalent or more than its break-even point for production in the country. There is need to invest in R&D so that the sector can get over the technological obsolescence which in the past has inhibited its capacity to produce appropriate machinery at competitive prices. This will call for joint efforts on the part of the industry as well the government. On the demand side, there will be certain surge as the entire textile sector is gradually making a strong comeback. This along with various progremmes initiated under the textile package for upgradation of technology in weaving and processing segments are expected to boost the demand for modern textile machinery. Besides, there is also need to explore the export markets that source more than Rs 420 crore worth machinery from India. Towards this end, the machinery sector will have to prepare a comprehensive action plan aimed at augmenting exports through promotional measures supported by a concrete government policy.