The Hindu : Business : Handloom exporters deny charges

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
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Handloom exporters deny charges

Staff Reporter

KANNUR: Handloom exporters here have refuted the charge that private handloom exporters are depriving handloom weavers of their work by exporting powerloom products.

The Kerala Handloom Export Organisation (KHEO) and the Kerala Handloom Association (KHA) in a joint release here denied that handloom exporters here were promoting powerlooms and thereby denying the handloom weavers here of their livelihood.

KHEO president C. Jayachandran and KHA president T.N. Lakshmanan said that exports from here accounted for 95 per cent of the textile exports from the State over the last 60 years.

Though all districts in the State had handloom centres, handloom units in the district alone were able to enter foreign and domestic markets. Till 1995, foreign buyers had endorsed the price of handloom products from here, they said adding that the exporters here had been struggling to survive since these buyers started getting powerloom products from other countries and other States in India 12 years ago.

The KHEO and KHA presidents said that the weavers' co-operative societies here that had been directly exporting handloom products were aware of these facts.

Though the societies had been receiving State and Central Government support, including export-marketing facilities, they were hardly able to get direct orders from foreign buyers, they said.

It was not fair to blame the private exporters here for the situation in which the weavers in the societies were not getting adequate work, they added.

Mr. Jayachandran and Mr. Lakshmanan said that the buyers abroad were not insisting that textile products being exported from here should be handloom.

Over the last 15 years, the exporters, including those in the field for nearly five decades and newcomers, were engaged in a struggle to face the challenges in retaining the foreign market, they said.

The difficulty of the handloom products to compete with powerloom products, produced by modern powerlooms that could produce 300 metres of fabric a day, was well known, they added.

They also assured that the exporters and handloom producers would give priority to the handloom weavers here, including those in the co-operative sector, while giving work.

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