India should strengthen quality control (QC) and step up research and development (R&D) efforts to exploit its potential of turning a global manufacturing hub for personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, according to a report by the Gurugram-based Institute for Competitiveness, which recently said despite achieving self-sufficiency in domestic manufacturing of such kits, PPE fabric and seam tapes, the country still relied on imports for procuring a critical component like seam sealing equipment.

India needs to indigenise the production of critical equipment and machineries for essential medical supplies to have complete control over the end-to-end manufacturing value chain and to become a fully capable manufacturer of highest quality PPE kits and other essential medical supplies, the report suggested.

The Institute for Competitiveness is the Indian knot in the global network of Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Harvard Business School.

"It will bring more consistency into the quality of the PPEs manufactured, reduce the testing and rejection overheads post-delivery and allow local manufacturers to scale up their production to reach not only domestic markets but also global markets," said the report.

“We need to shift our mindsets from focusing on cost to ensuring world-class quality, if we, as a nation want to be known as high-quality manufacturer with economical costing rather than a cheap quality nation with low costing,” Amit Kapoor, chair of the institute, told a news agency.

By July, India indigenous supply of PPE kits had exceeded the domestic demand and it exported 23,00,000 PPEs to the United States, the United Kingdom, Senegal, Slovenia, and the United Arab Emirates, the report said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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