Industry leaders of the region were shouting for help from government to revive the sector and recent budget has brought a ray of hope to this rambling industry. Finance Minister of India, Mr. Chidambaram has included Bhiwandi in six mega clusters to be developed. Bhiwandi will be developed as powerloom mega cluster and Rs. 70 crore has been approved for infrastructure development and production improvement.

Although Bhiwandi power loom sector is happy by this announcement and take this as positive step for the industry, they also seek easy loan facilities and uninterrupted power supply at affordable cost, so that they can expand from just grey cloth production to other activities in downstream chain.

Powerlooms in Erode:

Erode has approximately 3, 00,000 powerlooms. Powerloom Development and Export Promotion Council chairman M.S. Mathivanan said Erode and nearby places had about two lakh powerlooms with about four lakh weavers.

The units made grey and yarn-dyed fabric and catered mainly to the domestic market. Main province for this powerloom is at Vellakoil in Kangayam Taluka. 33% of power looms are located in this area and they are in unorganized form and most of them are running the units on job work basis

Powerloom clusters in Budget 2008- 09:

6 centers have been chosen for developing them as mega cluster. Varanasi and Sibsagar for handlooms, Narsapur and Moradabad for handicrafts and Bhiwandi and Erode for powerlooms. Each mega Cluster will be allotted Rs. 70 Cr. Initially Rs. 100 Cr will be allotted for stating the process.

It is expected that these clusters will have modern machinery, provide testing services, and have a computer aided design studio among others. And they would help in the development of international quality products.

Fibre2fashion.com has gathered comments from some industry experts on the implication of power loom clusters on industry and livelihood.

Mr. Ketan Sanghvi, Industry Expert, on Powerloom cluster and related issues:

On the face of it, this seems like a good step. However, the specific details have yet to be announced. I believe that the devil is always in the details. Clusters such as Bhiwandi and Erode have peculiar issues such as infrastructure (including energy availability and cost), manpower training, technical and business education, etc. The powerloom sector needs to function in a decentralized manner while adopting the good systems and techniques from the organized sector.

Regarding the energy situation, many entrepreneurs have fled to other states because of the terrible situation about power availability as well as cost. Imagine electricity being available in a factory for only 17 to 18 hours every day. How will this business stay competitive?

Another issue is the poor knowledge of many entrepreneurs, who feel that cheaper is always better and who are tempted to take shortcuts in their quest to curtail expenses. Their focus is absolutely short-term and they are more worried about surviving the current season rather than building up a competitive business. These shortcuts may include evasion of taxes and electricity tariffs, insufficient or improper selection and maintenance of machinery, exploitation of the labor pool, etc.

For most entrepreneurs, it is their family business. A few are aware of options such as technical textiles and specialty fabrics, which may offer them an avenue to earn better margins. Investing part of the funds announced under this scheme to educate entrepreneurs will definitely yield good dividends, but in the long run. A focus on quality and competitiveness will surely yield dividends in the long run.

As a machinery manufacturer, the biggest problem that I have seen our customer facing is shortage of good technical manpower (in the field of weaving technicians and weaver). Because the technician has insufficient knowledge or is lazy, he does not encourage the customer to modernize. Most of the entrepreneurs are basically investors without any technical knowledge and they are often slaves to their technicians. Another good avenue for spending the funds would be in training manpower. Of course, various segments of the industry, including the textile ministry, the Office of the Textile Commissioner, the manufacturers and the users are aware about this issue since almost two years, but there is no co-ordinated effort in manpower training.