The Hindu Business Line : Skilled manpower critical for textile sector: Textile Secretary

"Skilled manpower for the textile sector is a critical issue and is going to become more critical over the years. We are in talks with a number of organisations and will come up with a realistic policy for the sector in sometime," said Mr D.P. Singh, Textiles Secretary, at the inauguration of the Auditorium at the Apparel House in Gurgaon, the new office of the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC).

The Apparel House is to be a one-stop-shop spread over five acres with features such as the 70,000 sq ft exhibition complex, a business centre, a 315-seat auditorium and bank and foreign exchange facilities amongst others. It will house 250 showrooms for exporters. The total project cost being Rs 63.62 crore.

At the inauguration, Mr Shankersinh Vaghela, Union Minister of Textile, congratulated garment exporters for achieving a new milestone of $ 8.2 billion exports in2005-06 with a growth of 32 per centcompared to the previous year.He further stated that the Ministry was looking at furthering the export value to $ 9.5 billion this year.

Quality control

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Singh said that AEPC would have to achieve growth through quality control. He said that India had already overtaken China in terms of exports and it had to maintain quality to keep up the trend of export growth.

Mr Vijay Agarwal, Chairman-AEPC said, "Export Performance Certificates have been issued to 1150 exporters last year and 577 this year for duty free import of trimmings and embellishments to increase exports of value-added garments". He further stated that seven new Apparel Training and Design Centres had been opened in the country, totalling to 13. Special training courses were also being provided to about 1800 candidates under the Other Backward Castes category.

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