Apparel Online India Magazine May 1st Issue 2018 | Page 9

MIND TREE Apparel exports are going through a bad phase post- GST implementation and reduction in duty drawback. Many small units are shutting down as they can’t meet the cost target of buyers. So labour availability is as per demand and there is no shortage of manpower these days. As far as automation is concerned, I must say that in Delhi-NCR automation really doesn’t work due to multi-product industry and impact is negligible on worker requirements. In some cases where productivity is high and efficiency is at its best, one need to get more and more business to cut fixed costs. So there is no impact or change as such on labour requirement or availability. Purshottam Gupta, CEO, Ekta Fashion, Jaipur Skilled labour availability is still an issue for apparel manufacturing industry. Along with this, I want to insist that Indian domestic market is still a better opportunity compared to exports, since GST on fabric and reduction in duty drawback rates has badly hit exporters. Due to these reasons, apparel export is like non-profitable business. Exporters like us are really in trouble due to non- refund of the ITC since July; and even banks didn’t support exporters after Nirav Modi case. Unnecessary documents NEXT MINDTREE QUESTION According to latest official data released, Indian apparel exports is in a recessionary zone with decline of (-) 17.78% for the month of March 2018 against the corresponding month of March 2017. Further India’s apparel production has shown a decline of (-) 4.7% in the month of February and a decline of (-) 9.9% for the period April-February 2017-18… Even in this scenario, we find some companies doing well and expanding. Are you one of them…? If yes, please share reasons of doing well in this difficult period? required by banks and waiting for shipping bill update at DGFT are also concerning issues as banks don’t support until and unless all documents are as per their system and their ease as well. Sometimes even the banks hold export documents up to 10 days. All this is against ease of doing business. Such issues are against the industry and have negative impact on employment generation, especially at workers’ level. POST YOUR COMMENTS www.apparelresources.com [email protected] www.apparelresources.com | MAY 1-15, 2018 | Apparel Online India 9