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'We are putting thrust on bivoltine sericulture' - Chairman, Silk Board

27 May '09

6 min read

We further asked about the remedies to overcome the problems the silk sector is facing in India, for which he gave a descriptive and detailed reply by saying, “A production programme to improve quality of Indian silk to international standards and improve productivity & cost competitiveness is being pursued, besides which, greater thrust is being given for promotion of non-mulberry silks in the existing areas of North East, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand and at the same time expanding it to other areas like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar etc”.

“Programmes are being implemented to improve technologies at all stages of the process of silk development, and diversify products with inputs for improvement of looms and designs such that they may expand the export share of the country. We are improving Research & Development and the effective transfer of technology at all stages; augmenting efforts for the spread of bivoltine sericulture; encouraging clustering of activities of reeling and weaving and strengthen linkages between the producers and industry; periodically reviewing the import policy for raw silk taking into account the balanced interests of the sericulturists as well as export manufacturers.

“The Government is already providing assistance to the Indian Silk Export Promotion Council, Mumbai for undertaking various export promotion activities such as participation in international fairs, organizing generic promotion stalls in domestic fairs like Textiles India, publicity in foreign trade magazines, publication of magazine “Silk India” and colour forecast card for domestic silk manufacturers, dissemination of overseas trade information among exporters, etc.

“CSB through its R&D has been able to assess and help the exporters/manufacturers in bringing new fashions and designs to the markets to attract more and more new customers. It has also introduced quality control through the Silk Mark Organisation of India (SMOI) thereby assuring the customers of the silk quality.

“Government has rationalized value addition/input-output norms specified under the EXIM Policy, the facility of duty free import of raw material under the Advance Licensing Scheme, import of capital goods at concessional rate of duty for export products.

“For technological up-gradation of the industry, loans at five percentage points less than applicable rate, under the Technological Up-gradation Fund Scheme for the textiles sector is available inter alias to the silk sector also. Import duty on silk machinery has been reduced to 10 percent”, he ended by saying.

We also discussed the serious issue of the biggest hit faced by Banarasi Silk industry due to cheap Chinese imports and questioned him about government's concern for helping these handloom weavers, to which he said, “The antidumping duty on Chinese Mulberry raw silk has been imposed on 2A Grade & below, essentially to protect the interests of sericulture farmers and silk reelers. Subsequent to imposition of antidumping duty on Raw Silk there was large scale dumping of even Chinese Silk Fabrics during 2002-03 at very cheap rates resulting in closure of many Silk weaving units in places like Varanasi, Doddaballapur, Surat etc”.

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