Ludhiana hosiery market faces a slump

LUDHIANA: Tough competition from Chinese goods, poor power supply adversely affected the hosiery trade in Ludhiana.



Instead of increasing last year’s Rs 4000 crore turnover, industrialists fear a big market slump. The industry employs four lakh people.

The Hosiery industry of Ludhiana with an annual turnover of Rs 4000 crores is in a bad shape these days. It seems to have fallen victim to the growing unrest prevailing all over the country. Industrialists of the city feel that all these would hit the hosiery business.

The prevailing situation in the country and uncertainty in these days due to floods, tension in Jammu and Kashmir and growing violence in Orissa and Karnataka, threat posed by the Chinese goods have cast a shadow on the hosiery industry in Ludhiana.

Punjab is called the Manchester of India. The hosiery industry of Ludhiana is famous the worldover for its low cost and quality products. It has an international market of Rs 2000 crores. In Ludhiana there are around 15,000 small and medium units.

This generates employment for over four lakh people.

During the last financial year, due to extremely favourable conditions the industry had done extremely well and registered a turnover of Rs 4000 crores.

SM Gupta, owner of Companion hosiery, admitted that the present time is not very favorable for the hosiery industry. He urged the government to impose anti-dumping duty on the Chinese products in order to fight the threat posed by Chinese goods.

KK Goyal, another industrialist said the rates of yarn would not have been increased, if it was not for severe power cuts. The shortage of labour could have been met from outside, in that case we could have met the expected target of Rs 5000 crore. We will not be able to increase sales by 20 per cent, he added.