14
|
The Textile Magazine
SEPTEMBER 2011
Major challenges facing Indian textile
machinery manufacturers
exclusive
Mr. Hari Shankar, Whole-Time Director of Lakshmi
Card Clothing and Manufacturing Co. Ltd., has just
taken over as Chairman of Textile Machinary Manu-
factures’ Association (TMMA). In his first interaction
with The Textile Magazine after taking over as Chair-
man, he spoke on the issues and challenges facing the
Indian textile machinery manufacturers and the study
that TMMA is conducting jointly with the Ministry of
Heavy Industries to prepare a comprehensive report
on the Indian textile industry.
Excerpts from the interview:
Import of second-hand machinery: Import of
second-hand textile machineries is not doing any
good to the Indian textile industry as it is hitting the lo-
cal industry. A lot of old machines are being imported
into the country, which are more than 10 years old,
particularly in the weaving segment. When the tech-
nology is already available in India, we don’t see a
need for import of second-hand machineries with
much lower technology. As the global textile industry is
moving out of the Western world, mills are looking to
dump machinery into markets like India. We are urg-
ing the Government to restrict import of second-hand
textile machineries.
Study on textile industry: At TMMA, under the
leadership of Mr. Atul Bhagwati, we have initiated a
comprehensive study on the Indian textile industry,
jointly with the Ministry of Heavy Industries, both on
the machinery and user industry. We have engaged
Gherzi, a global consultancy company, for doing this
study. Currently there is no authentic data available
on the Indian textile industry in terms of capacities in
textile manufacturing, imports/exports, gaps in tech-
nology and recommendations to the Government.
This study will help provide a complete overview of the
industry and will help the Government and stake-holders
to understand the industry, its challenges and require-
ments better. Based on our presentation, the Ministry of
Heavy Industries has agreed to partly fund this study. We
will be coming out with the initial report very soon and
the final report will be submitted by the end of this year.
On the entry of global textile manufacturers:
Global textile markets are clearly shifting towards In-
dia and China. Hence most of the global machinery
manufacturers are either already present or setting up
manufacturing base in India. This could result in in-
creased competition for Indian manufacturers, but we
have to get ourselves to the next level of technology.
Indian manufacturers have products and technolo-
gies which are on par and in some case setting global
standards. We have established strong customer rela-
tionships over the many decades.
As in the previous year, we are looking for active
participation of our members in the seminars, presen-
tations and workshops to be organised to have more
involvements from them. We have done this all under
the previous leadership and will continue to take it for-
ward.
w
Mr. S. Hari Shankar,
TMMA Chairman
By K. Gopalakrishnan