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Our Bureau

HYDERABAD, Oct. 4

THE National Handloom Expo-2002 is scheduled to be held here from October 7 to October 20 jointly by the Central and State Governments with 14 States taking part in it, according to Mr B.P. Acharya, Secretary of the Industries and Commerce Department.

He told presspersons here on Friday that the Centre had given funds for conducting the expo which was expected to yield a turnover of about 12 crore. It would be a major platform to market products of weavers who were trained in the designing of fabrics by the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT).

NIFT had conducted special programmes for 350 active primary co-operative societies of weavers and helped them in the modernisation of designs. For this, the Government had made available Rs 4.2 crore to NIFT with the mandate to train fabric designers at the grass roots level. Andhra Pradesh allotted Rs 20 crore for the purpose. The Centre, on its part, had given Rs 20 crore to the sector.

The Andhra Pradesh State Handloom Weavers Co-operative Society (APCO) after its reinvigoration has started showing impressive results. In the first half of this fiscal, it achieved a turnover of more than Rs 38 crore as against Rs 17 crore it made during the corresponding period of last year. It is hopeful of reaching a turnover of Rs 75 crore for the current financial year as against Rs 60 crore for the previous year.

APCO's decentralised marketing avenues called `Neta (handloom) Bazaars' have provided outlets for weavers to sell their products. The first such bazaar which was opened at Karimnagar last month by the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Chandrababu Naidu, had made a good impact and efforts were on to open similar units at other places, Mr Acharya said.

Mr Samir Sharma, Commissioner of Handlooms and Textiles, said that 44,000 sq ft space of the expo had already been booked and the demand was growing. APCO was encouraging weavers to move away from traditional varieties such as dhotis and sarees and to concentrate on garments. It had involved sales personnel in operating strategic business units and was offering them monetary incentives.

Mr Nathan, Director of NIFT, said arrangements for marketing APCO products had been made with Shoppers' Stop, Pantaloon, Lifestyle and other major outlet chains before the design work was taken up with 66 weavers' societies.

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