President of Tirupur Exporters’ Association (TEA), Mr. A. Sakthivel has congratulated the union commerce and industry minister, Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman for the maximum efforts taken to “successfully resolve the differences between US and our Country relating to the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes in the WTO in a manner that addresses our concerns and ending the impasse and also opening the way for implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).”
He also urged the minister to speed up the process of having Free Trade Agreement with European Union and Canada, as these countries are major markets for India’s garment exports. “Moreover, we are in a disadvantageous position in these countries, since our competing countries are enjoying the duty free status in European market and concessional rate of General Preferential Tariff in Canada. We need a level playing field and thereby we could increase our competitiveness and take efforts not only for sustaining in these markets but also could dent other market shares,” Mr. Sakthivel said.
Another most important point “we wish to make at this juncture is that once our export is grown we would provide more employment particularly to women workers and this employment intensity garment sector should be given a priority in the point of economy and employment,” TEA president said.
The new Foreign Trade Policy will likely to be announced soon and in view of this, “we request the minister at least to announce the continuance of 3 per cent Interest Subvention scheme with retrospective effect from April one 2014 which is need of the hour to reduce the cost of manufacturing and increase our competitiveness in the global market also, Mr. Sakthivel added.
