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The hosiery products that are supplied from Tirupur cluster to the domestic markets have cumulatively become costlier by 123 %, since the first collective decision of entire hosiery manufacturers to increase the prices happened in 2005.
A glance through the cost trend graph accessed by The Hindu shows that the prices of the hosiery products from Tirupur cluster were raised on as many as 14 occasions since December 5, 2005.
Interestingly, the prices were scaled down only once between December 5, 2005 and the latest decision taken a few days back by the South India Hosiery Manufacturers Association (SIHMA) to increase the costs.
“The resolution to bring down the prices on July 11, 2011, by 5 % has been made only because of a significant reduction in the cotton yarn prices during that period, even though the other costs like transportation and labour charges were going higher”, SIHMA sources told The Hindu . The most numbers of price escalations occurred in 2010.
The year saw the hosiery products from Tirupur cluster become dearer on a total of four occasions with the prices collectively going up by 32 %.
“In 2010, the prices of end products have to be raised by 10, 7, 10 and 5 % within a gap of few months due to periodical hikes in input costs”, said the hosiery manufacturers.
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Uniforms for children, staff to be sourced by the corporation
The BJP will establish a Handlooms Corporation at a cost of ? 1000 crore to come to the aid of weavers and promote their products if it is voted to power in Telangana, said state president K. Laxman on Wednesday.
The corporation would ensure that uniforms for school children, RTC staff and other government undertakings are purchased directly from the corporation.
After addressing public meetings at Marikyal and other places on the fifth day of his ongoing ‘Jana Chaitanya Yatra’ Mr. Laxman told presspersons that the party aimed to improve the lives of the poor and downtrodden especially those belonging to the SC/STs and BCs.
Most of the weaving community had lost out in the four years of TRS rule and instead of making provision for loans, the government had sourced Bathukamma sarees from Surat and Coimbatore, he charged.
The Centre had been providing training to scores of weavers under the ‘Kausal Vikas Yojana’ programme but the government had failed to provide any employment potential. He demanded that the government immediately procure handloom material for uniforms to RTC staff and others.
The BJP leader said the TRS party will end up like the JD (S) party in Karnataka and ridiculed the effort of political parties in coming together irrespective of ideological differences to fight against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As countries across the world come together to honour, acknowledge and celebrate World MSME Day, the crucial sector of the economy has its own list of demands that it wants fulfilled.
As the country surges holding the baton of social progress, economic growth and digitisation, the MSME sector which contributes up to 45% of the GDP can no longer be ignored. Earlier this year, Minister of Commerce, Suresh Prabhu had said, “Ideas are born in human minds, and not necessarily in the boardrooms of large corporate,” emphasising how the new industrial policy 2018 will highlight the “M” in SMEs. Prabhu also claimed recently that not only will this new policy, which will be unveiled soon, pay immense attention to MSMEs, but it will also result in manufacturing to make up for $1 trillion of the India’s economy by 2025-2026. However, reeling from the impact of demonetisation and the haphazard implementation of the Goods and Services tax, the MSME sector is looking for succor and have some key demands.
Finance
For long, the unavailability of credit for SMEs has been a major stumbling block for small businesses. As the sector is largely informal, banks have hesitated to lend to SMEs for their unreliability to repay loans. With the influx of NFBCs, fintech firms and other alternatives for finances, this problem today has more solutions than it ever did. However, that may still not be the answer. Rajnish Goenka, Chairman, MSME Development Forum says, “NBFCs are gaining popularity in India but they charge 24% interest which is a figure for a small businessman. This year the RBI also said for the first time that SMEs are as relevant as the agriculture sector in the country.” Rajiv Chawla, Chairman, IamSME of India adds, “Out of the 21 public sector undertaking (PSUs), 11 are not funding because of issues related to NPA crises. Sources for credit are an issue that to be immediately addressed.”
Marketing
The Union Cabinet had claimed earlier this year that the definition of SMEs will be changed. Yet, this decision which was taken in February is yet to be notified. SMEs need to have clarity on their definition and then be marketed well.
The government needs to provide marketing support to MSMEs and also the trading companies to help the SMEs to market their products. While there have been marketing initiatives centered around SMEs, they have failed to live up to the expectation.
For example the scheme for providing financial assistance on marketing support under Marketing Assistance Scheme, provides assistance in organising exhibitions abroad and participation in international exhibitions/trade fairs. It is also meant to co-sponsor exhibitions organized by other organisations/ industry associations/agencies and organizing buyer-seller meets, intensive campaigns and marketing promotion events. There are then schemes like the Marketing Assistance & Technological Upgradation (MATU) that aim to help tap and develop domestic/overseas markets. However, MSMEs argue they would want more from these schemes and in fact many do not know how to avail the benefits.
Beyond marketing, Chawla says there are other schemes that need a serious relook. For example, the lean manufacturing programme. “The scheme was supposed to assist MSMEs in reducing their manufacturing costs, through proper personnel management, better space utilisation, scientific inventory management, improved processed flows, reduced engineering time and so on. This has been stopped for a year now.”
The more immediate consequence of the resultant uncertainty on the intellectual property rights (IPR) protection regime for GM technology, though, would be felt on herbicide-tolerant or HT cotton.
A strange situation prevails in cotton today. On the one hand, there is a Delhi High Court judgment of April 11, which invalidates Monsanto’s patent on its Bollgard II Bt cotton technology granted by the Indian Patent Office in February 2008. The patent was for a ‘cry2Ab’ gene isolated from a soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) — more specifically, for a method of synthesising its nucleic acid sequence and inserting the same into cotton plant cells.
The High Court held that this man-made Bt gene sequence had no “intrinsic worth”; it was inert, inanimate and without utility, unless incorporated into a plant variety. But since plants themselves are not patentable under the Indian Patents Act — they are covered under a separate Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers’ Rights law — the patent on the nucleic acid sequence had no meaning once the gene was introgressed into and became part of a plant.
But the judgment comes even as India has farmers wanting to plant genetically modified (GM) cotton hybrids, incorporating not just ‘cry1Ac’ and ‘cry2Ab’ Bt genes (which code for proteins toxic to Heliothis bollworm insect pests), but also those that enable spraying of herbicides. The technology supplier in this case, too, is Monsanto: the US life sciences major’s Roundup Ready Flex (RRF) cotton contains a ‘cp4-epsps’ gene from another soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which produces a modified protein that allows the plant to tolerate application of glyphosate herbicide. Thus, while farmers cannot spray glyphosate in normal cotton — the chemical cannot distinguish between weeds and the crop itself — they can do it in RRF cotton.
Monsanto had, in March 2013, sought approval from the Union Environment Ministry’s Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) for the commercial release of Bollgard II-RRF cotton, harbouring both insect-resistance (from Bt genes) and glyphosate-tolerance (cp4-epsps gene) traits. However, in July 2016, Monsanto withdrew the application, along with the dossiers containing the results of all the bio-safety research and open field trials that it had submitted in respect of this GM cotton.
The provocation for the move was the Agriculture Ministry issuing, in December 2015, a Cotton Seeds Price (Control) order, followed by a draft notification on compulsory licensing of GM technologies in May 2016. The first order empowered the Centre to “fix and regulate” the royalty/trait value charged by a GM technology supplier from seed companies that have incorporated it into their cotton hybrids. The second notification obliged technology developers to licence their proprietary GM traits on demand and not charge royalty exceeding 10 per cent of the maximum retail price of the seeds being marketed by the licensees.
Now, with the Delhi High Court invalidating the patent on Bollgard II Bt cotton, any prospect of Monsanto reconsidering withdrawal of its application for commercialisation of RRF technology – which gives farmers the option of spraying glyphosate, rather than relying on manual labour, for removal of weeds – has been rendered remote.
The court’s ruling, moreover, can extend to any man-made nucleic acid sequence of a gene and its introgression into a host plant genome using GM/biotechnological tools. According to one estimate, there are currently at least 107 patents in India, relating to such non-naturally occurring genetic material and production of transgenic plants. All of them — granted not only to the likes of Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, BASF Plant Science and DuPont, but even the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian Institute of Science and other publicly-funded institutions — stand to be invalidated in the wake of the judgment.
The more immediate consequence of the resultant uncertainty on the intellectual property rights (IPR) protection regime for GM technology, though, would be felt on herbicide-tolerant or HT cotton.
It is an open secret that many farmers, especially in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Maharashtra, have been planting Bollgard II-RRF cotton — despite the technology being “unapproved” by the GEAC and Monsanto officially withdrawing its application for commercialisation of the same. If the trade is to be believed, up to a tenth of the cotton seeds in the market now have HT genes — which farmers are illegally sowing.
The AP government, in January, even issued show cause notices to two leading seed companies. This, after leaf samples collected from their hybrids allegedly planted by farmers were found to contain the “illegal and unapproved” cp4-epsps HT gene. On February 9, the state’s agriculture department went a step further. It banned the application of glyphosate formulations “in any of the crops from June to November”! It is obvious that the real target here was HT cotton.
Two things are clear from all this. First, farmers are hungry for technology and will go to great lengths to plant GM crops, whether or not the government and green NGOs like it. Reports suggest that they are even prepared to pay a premium of 50 per cent or more for cotton seeds harbouring HT trait, in addition to just Bt genes. The reason is simple: they know the cost of manual weeding and how unpredictable it is to find labour in the peak agricultural season.
Second, the suppliers of technology — this applies equally to proprietary new-generation pesticide molecules like Dupont’s Rynaxypyr (‘Coragen’) and Bayer’s Flubendiamide (‘Fame’) — are mostly multinationals. For them, IPR protection is a major concern. The government can ensure that these companies do not engage in price gouging, while simultaneously promoting domestic breeding and R&D efforts. But invalidating patents is something they aren’t going to take lightly.
We are seeing this in cotton, where nearly a million Indian farmers last year grew GM hybrids without approval either from the official regulator or the technology developer. They may do so this season as well.
On the occasion of World MSME Day, President of India, Ram Nath Kovind launched Solar Charkha Mission and Sapark Portal for the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.
In a bid to encourage dialogue and partnership among various stakeholders of MSME ecosystem and discuss various issues and challenges of this sector, the Ministry of MSME today organized National Conclave “Udyam Sangam” to celebrate United Nation MSME day. The conclave was inaugurated by President Kovid in the presence of MSME Minister Giriraj Singh and MSME Secretary Arun Kumar Panda, along with various MSME linked delegates.
Addressing the gathering, President Ram Nath Kovind said that the MSME plays crucial role in the growth and development of country and the world.” Appreciating the initiatives of the Ministry he said for MSMEs, event like this is first of its kind in which more than 6,000 entrepreneurs from across the country participated.
On this special occasion, President launched a job portal called ‘MSME Sampark’ and said this portal will help the skilled youth in getting employment and also act as a bridge between the talent pool and those enterprises seeking trained man power. Besides, the Solar Charkha Mission of the Ministry was also launched by the President.
The Mission will cover 50 clusters and every cluster will employ 400 to 2000 artisans. The Mission has been approved by the Government of India for which the MSME Ministry will disburse subsidy of Rs. 550 crores to the artisans.
This mission will help in generating employment for women in rural areas as well as support in the development of green economy, president added. Speaking on the occasion, Union MSME Minister Giriraj Singh said that in this 4 years tenure, the ministry has achieved the aim of generating 4 crore employment for the people.
Talking about the initiatives taken in promoting MSMEs, he said that our ministry disbursed collateral free loans to around 16 lakh entrepreneurs. Ministry has opened every door to facilitate MSME sector in every possible way and has been taking so many initiatives to promote and support MSME.
Calling MSMEs itself a sngam, MSME secretary Arun Kumar Panda said that this event is a collaboration of various entreprises from different states of India including various verticals like pharma, textile, defence, leather, handicrafts and many more. For the growth and prosperity of nation, the government has taken so many initiatives and in future also will take measures to make the MSME sector much stronger.
The Indian State of Andhra Pradesh will now utilise the expertise of Singapore in building a vibrant and productive real estate and construction industry. In this connection, Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh Real Estate Regulatory Authority (APRERA). A consortium of Singapore construction firms is finalising a textile park design and construction project with the Andhra Pradesh developers worth SGD60 million. In addition to this, construction companies of Singapore like Tiong Seng and CKR are in talks with developers in Andhra Pradesh to provide precast solutions.
“Our collaboration with APRERA is an important step in sharing knowledge and deepening our engagement with India. We will continue to develop this strong partnership to help them address areas of needs and introduce Singapore firms that can contribute towards the development in Andhra Pradesh,” said Hugh Lim, chief executive officer of BCA.
“With APRERA driving quality and on-time delivery of real estate projects in Andhra Pradesh, Singapore firms will be able to value-add to these efforts as they have built up expertise and experience in these knowledge areas,” he added.
Notably, APRERA is the authority overseeing the orderly development of the real estate sector (especially residential properties) in Andhra Pradesh.
Around 30 companies are joining the delegation with BCA on the mission trip to Andhra Pradesh. These companies include contractors, consultants, material suppliers, IT firms and trading and investment firms.
These companies have expressed interest in venturing into the market in Andhra Pradesh. Construction companies like Tiong Seng and CKR are in talks with developers there to provide precast solutions.
In addition to this, One Singapore Town, a consortium of A Alliance Architect, Pacific Prince Investment and Eyota Engineering, is in the advanced stage of finalising a textile park design and construction project worth SGD60 million
Further, an Andhra Pradesh developer also met with Singapore firms recently to explore opportunities to develop economic cities in the State. .
“There are ample opportunities in Andhra Pradesh for Singapore enterprises at this phase of city building. Our Indian counterparts can leverage on Singapore expertise and experience in building not just the city infrastructure or ‘hardware’ but also on growing the soft elements of a nurturing and gathering of human capital from all over the world,” said Pek Lian Guan, executive director and chief executive officer of Tiong Seng Holdings Limited.
Highlights of Memorandum of Understanding
Under the MOU, BCA and APRERA will collaborate to enhance the capabilities of APRERA to promote and create a safe, high quality, environment-friendly and productive built environment in Andhra Pradesh. BCA will share knowledge and expertise relating to the set-up, operation, experience and best practices in the following areas:
10. 1) BCA’s initiatives to create a safe built environment in Singapore through the Construction and Real Estate Network (CORENET) e-Submission system for project approvals.
11. 2) BCA’s Construction Quality Assessment System (CONQUAS) and Bonus System for Construction Quality (BSCQ) for quality construction procurement,
12. 3) BCA’s Green Building Roadmaps and Green Mark Certification to promote environmental sustainability in the built environment, and
13. 4) BCA’s Construction Productivity Roadmaps to enhance the quality of Singapore’s construction workforce and the adoption of productive technologies to ensure cost effective and timely delivery of construction projects.
BCA will also be conducting three-day briefings in Singapore for senior Andhra Pradesh officials. The officials will also be visiting consultants’ offices, construction sites and precast production sites to get an in-depth understanding of the built environment in Singapore.
The capital city of Amravati will set a new yardstick in the contruction landscape of India. Photo courtesy: ccdmc.co
In addition, there will be three-day deep dive training sessions conducted in Vijayawada for the urban development and housing related agencies and private sector developers and contractors selected by APRERA.
Notably, Singapore has been involved in helping Andhra Pradesh build its capital city Amaravati since 2014 under the MOU signed between the Infrastructure Corporation of Andhra Pradesh and Enterprise Singapore.
The Taiwan Textile Federation and the Bureau of Foreign Trade would be forming the Taiwan Pavilion for the 6th year at Technotex India Exhibition which will be held in Mumbai from 28th-29th June 2018. Technotex India is organized by the Ministry of Textiles and FICCI.
Exploring new partnerships and business opportunities in the growing technical textiles sector of India, this year 10 leading Taiwanese companies producing innovative technical, functional, performance and industrial textiles and accessories will be showcasing their high-end products along with others at the Taiwan Pavilion @ Technotex India Exhibition. This will be an excellent opportunity for Indian buyers of “Smart Technology Textiles” to network with the Taiwanese suppliers here in India.
Taiwan is one of the very few countries who can fulfill India’s requirements as the Taiwan textiles sector is the leader in technology innovations and manufacturing in the world with a strong research and development segment. Targeting the growing Indian technical textile industry, which is expected to grow at a rate of 20 percent annually to touch USD 30 billion over the next five years, Technotex India is a perfect platform to explore business opportunities under this sector in India.
Fashion as part of a function and eco-friendly and sustainable textiles are important factors in the growing apparel industry across major markets. Thanks to a surge in global demand for sustainability, technological, innovation and new functionalities textiles. Taiwan’s textile manufacturers are surfing the wave by catering to the wellness generation, getting the production more cost-effective and going greener.
Mr. Sean Tsai of Taiwan Textile Federation said, “Technotex is an important platform for us to showcase and promote Taiwan’s strength in technical as well as functional textiles amongst the Indian buyers across various industry verticals. India has a huge potential for us and we are looking forward to build new contacts and explore business opportunities in the Indian technical textiles market as well as other sectors such as sports apparel, outdoor gear and wear, home textiles and medical and healthcare sectors. We invite all to come and meet us at Technotex India 2018.
The Bangladesh Government last week extended the deadline for completing remediation works in the readymade garment (RMG) factories, which are being inspected under the joint initiative of the government and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), from April 30 to December this year after almost all the factories missed the deadline.
The country is under pressure in national and international forums due the slow progress in fixing safety faults in the factories, state minister for labour Mohammadd Mujibul Haque said in a meeting with the representatives of the garment factories that missed the deadline.
The minister cautioned the representatives that strict action will be taken against those who fail to meet the new deadline, according to Bangladesh media reports. Lack of fund is the main challenge for remediation, according to factory representatives, many of whom said they could not start remediation work as their factories were housed in rented buildings, whose owners were not willing to fix the problems.
Bilateral tariffs may reduce the value of U.S. farm exports to China by about 40 percent, according to a report published by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, a government think tank.
U.S. soybean, cotton, beef and cereal shipments to China may each drop by 50 percent in value, it said in a report published on its official WeChat account on Tuesday, citing results of a simulation. The price of imported soybeans may rise 5.9 percent and imported cotton prices may increase 7.5 percent, with minor impacts predicted for other farm goods, it said.
China could take measures including sourcing supply from countries within the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, increasing purchases of soybean substitutes and supporting domestic production of the oilseed, according to the think tank. It also suggested that the government maintain its minimum purchase prices for wheat and rice and subsidize growers. The Asian country is the world’s top importer of soybeans and rice, third-biggest cotton buyer and biggest wheat producer. “To resolve the trade dispute via negotiation is still a win-win move,” the report said. China was the world’s largest buyer of farm products in 2017.
The country’s large volume of imports of land-intensive crops including grains, oilseeds and cotton, help save its farmland and water resources. Authorities have strengthened control over pollution from livestock and chicken breeding after the country’s first environmental protection tax law came into effect on Jan. 1. The law is set to increase costs and may affect half of China’s pork production, 70 percent of chicken output and 58 percent of its dairy cows.
Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia today said the goods and services tax has entered a “smooth phase” within a year of its roll-out, with a “pretty good” tax compliance and the efforts will now be to simplify tax return forms.
The GST, the biggest tax reform since Independence, was rolled out on July 1, 2017, which subsumed over a dozen local taxes. It transformed India into a single market for movement of goods and services.
Over 1.11 crore businesses have registered themselves under the GST. The average monthly compliance of return filing and tax payment is going up in a staggered manner and after a period of time it is expected to be around 96 percent, Adhia said.
Adhia said the new indirect tax regime has reduced a plethora of taxes, removed cascading effect of taxation and state check-post, increased taxpayer base with much less possibility of evasion and brought about end-to-end electronic filing.
“Of course, for any new system there will always be initial glitches. These glitches were mainly on account of lack of information and so the moment the information gap was removed, people felt more comfortable. I think all the glitches are over and we are in a smooth phase of implementation,” said Adhia, who also holds the charge of revenue secretary.
On the focus in the second year of the GST regime, he said the tax officers were working on a single page return form which would be modular in nature and “user-friendly.”
“This year’s main agenda would be to implement the new and simple system of filing of returns,” he said.
On the critics saying the GST has not led to the intended formalisation of the economy, Adhia said the data suggested otherwise since the number of people coming into the tax net has gone up after the roll-out of the tax regime.
“Pre-GST there were 60-65 lakh businesses who were migrated and the remaining (almost 48 lakh) are all new. With these many new dealers or businesses coming into the tax net. If it is not formalisation, what is it?” Adhia asked.
He said 25 percent of the businesses who file GST returns have zero tax liability and hence file returns with a lag as there is very less penalty. “Compliance is pretty good. There is only delay in compliance. For July 2017, of the people who were supposed to file GSTR-3B, 93.63 percent had filed over a period. But if you take March 2018, 79 percent had filed. Over a period, all these percentages will be 96 percent,” Adhia said.
Elaborating on the simplified return form, Adhia said the one-page return form would be modular in nature. “So if you are B2C (business to consumer), many of the sections (in return form) will not be open for you at all. If B2C, then only one form will open, a small table. It will be user-friendly,” he said.
He said the return form would have two sections—a table to show tax liability and the input tax credit being claimed, and another part where there would be invoice-wise details to be uploaded in a tabular form which the B2B (business-to-business) has to fill.
The GST Council had in its last meeting on May 4 approved the design of new return forms. It was decided that the current system of filing summary returns (GSTR-3B) and final sales return (GSTR-1) would continue for six months. After that, a new return software would be ready.
