Concerned over continuous fall in the exports of readymade garments (RMG) from India, garment exporters of the city are now demanding that the central government should lower lending rates for them and bring out new incentive schemes else the fall will continue. According to the recent data released by Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S), there has been decline of 7.60 percent in India’s export of RMG to the world in financial year 2017-18 as compared to financial year 2016-17. As per the data, total exports of RMG from India was 1,16,554 Crores in 2016-17 which has fallen to 1,07,698.80 crores in 2017-18. Alarmed over the fall, prominent garment exporters of the city on Saturday attended a meeting organised by Apparel Exporters Promotion Council (AEPC) and discussed the next course of action.
Speaking on the issue, Harish Dua, president, Knitwear and Apparel Exporters Organisation and executive member of AEPC said,”In 9 months out of last one year, huge fall has been registered in exports of RMG from India. Various reasons are responsible for this grim situation, the biggest being non seriousness of union government for solving issues concerning garment exporters. Its been months now since various incentives and subsidies available to us were withdrawn and reduced, but ever since no new initiatives have been taken by the government for revival of exports” Dua also added, “We once again request government and especially ministry of commerce to start new schemes to encourage exporters and also introduce incentives to support us”
According to Narinder Chugh, permanent invitee to AEPC, “This is a very critical situation especially for Ludhiana which has the highest number of garment exporters in the region. From past one year the growth of garment exports has suffered a big blow, but this problem can be overcome even with little initiatives by government like reduction of rate of interest on bank loans for exporters to 2 percent. In addition to this solving the issue of delay in GST refunds and bringing new schemes for technology upgradation can change the entire scenario for us”.

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