The Hindu Business Line : Stepping up of leather gloves exports urged

Kolkata May 18 Pointing out that the country's export of industrial leather gloves has been stagnating in the last few years, Dr K. Elangovan, Executive Director, Council for Leather Exports (CLE), said "we need to increase our presence in the US and Japanese markets, for both volume (US) and value (Japan) ".

India's market share for this product in the US has dropped to 12 per cent from the earlier 18 per cent.

While global imports have grown from $7.2 billion to $10 billion, India's exports in this segment to the major markets have just gone up to $585 million from $440 million. The three broad product categories are sports gloves, industrial gloves and others. He felt the focus markets for plain vanilla industrial leather gloves perforce have to be the countries with a strong manufacturing base such as the UK, Japan, Germany, France and West Europe.

He called for clear strategies for the leather gloves sector based on a PPP model, as there was no dearth for funds from the Government side.

He said an action plan was needed to increase the country's global share in leather goods and gloves exports from the present low of 1.68 per cent. He felt this was well in line with the leather goods export target of $7 billion by 2011 from the current $2.69 billion.

Making a presentation on the current leather goods and gloves export scenario at an Industrial Gloves Export Summit organised by CLE (ER), in collaboration with Indian Leather Products Association (ILPA), Dr Elangovan said while leather goods exports have fared better, leather gloves have not taken off despite huge opportunities in the developed country markets.

Presenting the CLE roadmap for achieving incremental exports in leather gloves, including value-added fashion gloves, he said leather has already been identified as a thrust sector for Indian exports in the 11th Plan.

Citing the low utilisation of Plan panel grants for leather sector development in the 10th Plan (only Rs 102 crore was utilised out of a total of Rs 400 crore), he said, the industry needs to think seriously as to how it is going to absorb the amount of Rs 982 crore agreed upon under the 11th Plan.

Some 82 per cent of the leather gloves manufactured in India are from Kolkata, which has emerged, over the years, as a major producing centre.

According to Mr A.K. Chatterjee, Chairman of CLE, eastern region, eastern India has crossed the Rs 2,000-crore milestone for leather goods and gloves export during 2006-07 at Rs 2,118 crore, registering a growth of 15.5 per cent. In the case of leather gloves, the growth has been higher at 18 per cent, with exports at Rs 595 crore (Rs 431.93 crore).

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