March 4, 2002

`19’

THREE PRONGED APPROACH ENABLING TEXTILE INDUSTRY FOR RIGHTFUL PLACE IN GLOBAL MARKET

    The Government of India has opted for a three pronged approach to enable Indian textile industry to find a rightful place in the global market. The three most notable thrust areas are investment in technological upgradation, improvement in productivity and quality and finally thrust on increasing exports. For each of the thrust areas, it has already started, or are in the process of starting programmes and schemes for effective action.

    Speaking on the occasion of 43^rd Joint Technical Conference hosted by NITRA in New Delhi, the Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, Shri S. B. Mahapatra mentioned that the future of textile exports lies mainly in garments. Recognizing this, the new Textile Policy has fixed a target of 25 billion US dollars worth of exports for clothing and ready made by 2010. Government has already taken far reaching step of de-reservation of the Garment Industry which would remove existing constraints on size, enable expansion, improve cost-effectiveness by exploitation of economies scale, and also substantially increase employment in this highly labor intensive industry.

    Mr. Mahapatra further said that with the setting up of the WTO and gradual phasing out of quantitative restrictions (or) and scheduled dismantling of the tariff barriers aimed at complete integration of the textile trade by the year 2004, the textile scenario is undergoing a complete metamorphosis. In the globalised textile economy, the industry is required not only to fight for its share in the international textile trade on equal footing without guarantee of access through the quota regime under Multi Fiber Agreement (MFA) but also to protect its turf in the domestic market. However, the phasing out of QR has its share of benefit too. Besides constraints, a lot of opportunities are also blanketed in this situation, which have to be seized at all cost.

    The Secretary, mentioned that the industry, which so far has been functioning under a highly protected environment, has unfortunately become rather complacent neglecting technology upgradation, an essential prerequisite for international competitiveness. It will not be able to withstand the strong currents of globalisation if timely and corrective actions are not taken. Shri Mahapatra highly appreciated the commendable job done by TRAs but TRAs have to be prepared for the new challenges. Government has to see the future of R&D. It is understood that expenditure on R&D in India is less than 0.03% of the total turnover. The income generation efforts of TRAs have diverted the concentration of TRAs from fundamental research which is a major hurdle for inventing significant break-through technologies. He assured that TRAs financial aspects will be taken care of in a more reasonable manner by the Government so that they can fully concentrate on pure technology upgradation.

    Dr. J.V.Rao, Director, NITRA informed that NITRA is the first amongst the TRAs to achieve the prestigious ISO 9001 status and presently dealing with 17 significant projects pertaining to textile and allied sectors. He mentioned that NITRA has carved a niche in the area of Effluent Treatment Plants from concept to commissioning. It successfully installed two ETPs as Ministry of Textiles assignments. One is in Erode, Tamilnadu and the other is in Bargarh in Orissa. The forthcoming NITRA Garment Centre is also going to help the garment industry immensely especially in manpower development through different HRD exercises and short-term course packages.

    Shri Sharad Jaipuria, Chairman, NITRA Council of Admn. in his presidential address discussed about the existing problems of TRAs and their probable solutions. He identified three areas such as industry’s inability to actively support TRAs due to creating sickness, worst ever economic slump leading to a standstill in industrial activities and inadequate funding.He suggested that in the context of global challenges facing the industry R&D at TRAs should be focused to meet the requirements of industrial applied research and prioritization should be on technology upgradation, product development and diversification and solving day-to-day shop floor problems in addition to areas of fundamental research.

    Altogether 29 technical papers were presented during the 2-day conference in the presence of a large number of delegates from all over the country.