By IANS
New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday asked the textile industry to look at the future and not at the next season to ensure their global competitiveness and provide a cushion against short-term aberrations.
Addressing a textile seminar here, he also asked the domestic industry to climb from being low-cost vendors to high-end, high-volume vendors with globally known brand names and international footprint.
The prime minister also took up the recent complaints by the exporting community where garment manufacturers play an important role and assured all measures to ensure that productivity of the economy was not hurt by rupee appreciation.
“But these measures may be useful in the short term. We need to look at the long term also. Sops and subsidies will work if currency appreciation is a transient phenomenon,” he said.
“In the long run the industry must adjust itself to the new dynamic.”
Recognising the role of the textile sector in industrial economy, the prime minister told the valedictory session of the two-day event that he saw this industry as a vehicle for modernisation and revival of traditional skills and designs.
Keeping in view the inherent potential and historical roots of the industry, the textile ministry should work with the sector to ensure a growth rate of at least 15 percent per annum in the next decade, he said.
The prime minister also laid special emphasis on the handloom industry and said his government had launched specific trademarks concerned with this traditional sector to create additional value for the genuine products.
“This is a part of our heritage and is an asset which we must preserve, not only for its heritage value but for employment value,” he said, addi