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Tamil Nadu
inspecting A SAMPLE: Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh inaugurating the sale of Cooptex organic cotton shirts and other products at a Cooptex showroom in Chennai on Thursday. Handloom Minister N.K.K.P. Raja, Chief Secretary L.K. Tripathy and Cooptex Managing Director N.P. Nirmala, are in the picture. CHENNAI: A ‘Harmonised System’ (HS) classification code will soon be implemented for handloom and handloom products exports to facilitate a finer alignment with global trade, Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday. Addressing a press conference at the Co-optex headquarters here, Mr. Ramesh said the Finance Ministry was expected to notify a separate HS code for the handloom category in “the next two to three weeks.” Since 2002-03, when the existing classification code was inexplicably done away with, there was no data on the quantum of handloom exports from India. Terming this a “strange phenomenon” given that handloom was the second largest intensive sector after agriculture, the Minister said the last available credible data pointed to an export earnings of Rs.2,600 crore. “We presume, and this is a rough estimate, that exports during the previous year would have been in the range of Rs.3,600 crore.” The Minister pointed out that Tamil Nadu was home to the five Handloom Export Zones being set up by the Centre. The first HEZ was scheduled to be commissioned next month in Kancheepuram. The next HEZ at Nagercoil was expected by April, to be followed by the ones at Thiruvannamalai, Virudhanagar and Nagapattinam. A sixth project had been proposed at Thiruvallur. The Handloom Export Promotion Council in Chennai had also been sanctioned Rs.2 crore to set up design studios in Erode, Kannur and Hyderabad. Besides, a Rs.43-crore integrated park, the country’s first, would be commissioned soon at Palladam. Tamil Nadu, which was doing exceedingly well on the handloom front at a time when traditional weaving sectors elsewhere in the country were engulfed in crises, should seek certification for organic cotton products newly launched by Co-optex to facilitate exports to European and U.S. markets. The Centre would assist the State and Co-optex in getting the newly-launched organic cotton products to be certified by a Swiss accreditation agency, Mr. Ramesh said. He suggested Tamil Nadu evolve home-grown cotton, as most States from where it was currently sourcing the material were moving towards developing value-addition. The Minister also wanted Co-optex to pilot the farm-to-fabric experiment, which had become a demonstrable success in Andhra Pradesh with technical aid from IIT-Madras. Mr. Ramesh was of the view that India’s ascent to become the world’s second largest exporter of raw cotton was “not necessarily a good thing”. Pointing out that the ‘cotton revolution’ had been spearheaded by Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Haryana, he said the fact remained that 60 per cent of the cotton produced in the country was the Bt variety. “While we can take credit for the growth, we should also recognise that there is a threat to the local handloom industry as preference for Bt cotton was bound to escalate raw material costs for the traditional sector.” India should also compete with China in exporting yarn and fabric instead of raw cotton, he said. To a question on the impact on the adverse impact of rupee appreciation, Mr. Ramesh said continuous appreciation of the rupee had indeed put severe pressure on sectors such as textiles, leather and handicrafts. The Centre had announced three packages to address these concerns. Tamil Nadu Handloom Minister. N.K.K.P. Raja, Chief Secretary L. K. Tripathy, and Co-optex Managing Director M. P. Nirmala were present.
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