The Hindu Business Line : Govt working on relaxing labour laws in textile sector: Vaghela

THE Government on Thursday said it is committed to introducing flexibility in the labour laws and is working on ways to exempt part of the textile sector from some of the existing rigid labour regulations.

"The Government is aware of the problem faced by the industry due to the existing labour laws. We are working on introducing some degree of flexibility but have to take the concerns of our Left allies in addressing the issue," the Union Textiles Minister, Mr Shankersinh Vaghela, said.

At the Asian Textile Conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry, Mr Vaghela, said: "We are hopeful that the Left parties will understand the problem. If the Chinese can embrace the process of globalisation whole-heartedly, I do not see why the Left parties should not change their stand," he said.

On China emerging as a potential threat to India's textile exports, Mr Vaghela said: "China's textile export is growing at good pace. But we do not treat it as a threat. We are looking forward to benefiting from the huge customer base existing in the two countries."

He said the elimination of global textile quotas had provided Asian countries with an opportunity for major gains in trade because these countries enjoyed the natural advantages in the form of abundant raw material and low labour costs. "These advantages need to be dovetailed with technology upgradation and quality improvement to retain the competitive edge of Asian textile industry leading to a quantum jump in global share of the Asian textile exports in the post-quota regime," the Minister said.

Mr Vaghela, however, made it clear that the bottom line of success in the quota regime would have to be quality, prices, marketing skills, adherence to delivery schedules and work-place norms being sanitised upon by the buyers. Elimination of quotas, progressive liberalisation of market access by way of gradual reduction of import tariff and removal of quantitative restrictions on imports has led to intense competition both in domestic and international markets, he said, adding that there are several contributing factors for which the Asian textile industry will play a key role in the major textile and clothing markets of the world and will remain as an important segment of the economies of the Asian countries.

He also said the Ministry would support the industry in its demand for an extension of the Technology Upgradation Funds Scheme (TUFS) beyond 2007.

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