India's garment industry needs to be re-tailored
In a factory on the outskirts of New Delhi, several hundred men hunch over sewing machines stitching women's dresses that are destined for stores such as JC Penney, the US retailer.
These tailors, who earn around $50 (￡27, �41) a month, are unlikely to visit the American shopping malls that sell their handiwork. But one thing is sure: over the next year a surge in demand from western consumers is about to triple their ranks.
Kishore Magu, co-owner of Jyoti Apparels, the Indian garment exporter that employs them, says the end of the global textile quota system in December will trigger unprecedented demand for items such as trousers that quotas previously barred him from producing.
"Before, I had to fold my arms and say 'Sorry, sir, I cannot fulfil your order because of the quota'. Now I can make complete outfits," he says, showing off a new women's trouser design for US brand Sag Harbor.
His optimism is grounded in forecasts that India, after China, will be the biggest beneficiary of the end of the quota system. According to a recent report by McKinsey and DHL, India's textile and garment exports could be worth up to $30bn by 2013 from around $15bn today.
In preparation, India's textile and clothing industry plans to invest around $2bn over the next year to expand capacity to meet demand from US and European Union buyers, who are expected to consolidate their orders among several large suppliers, as quotas for small countries vanish.
Mr Magu, for example, plans to build two new factories and employ up to 500 more workers, an investment of around Rs100m (￡1.2m). This, however, reveals one of the weaknesses among Indian garment producers.
In India, it is still easier to manage smaller, separate factories instead of building one large ones, because the country's labour laws make sackings practically impossible in factories that employ more than 100 workers. As a result, industry believes India's strict labour laws could prevent the country from taking full advantage of the end of the quota regime.
"We need to have scale that is big enough to meet buyers' needs," says A. Sakthivel, chairman of the Apparel Export Promotion Council, a government-funded trade body. But to expand scale, he says, India needs more flexible labour laws that are linked to productivity and that would enable factory restructuring without the threat of strikes. Another potential hindrance is India's notoriously poor infrastructure.
In south India, some of the country's largest fabric and garment producers lack access to adequate port facilities, so must ship US-bound cargo via nearby Sri Lanka or Singapore.
And in spite of recent measures to reform India's bankrupt electricity sector, industrial customers generally pay around 30 per cent more for power than their Chinese counterparts.
This is on top of widespread power theft by small-scale textile producers, which still comprise around half the industry.
Meanwhile, Indian textile producers continue to pay more than their Chinese rivals for cotton, which has reduced the country's competitiveness with large cotton consumers, the US and the EU.
Although India has the world's largest land area for cotton production, farms yield only 300kg of cotton per hectare, compared with China's 1,000kg per hectare, according to a recent report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. To be competitive after the end of the quota regime, Unctad says India must reduce the cost of cotton by 10 per cent.
"Electricity and raw materials are very high costs but the main threat we are facing is high interest rates," adds Abhinav Shukla, head of the Ahmedabad Textile Mills Association, whose members supply to brands such as Gap, Levi's and Dockers.
Despite all of these formidable threats to India's success after quotas end, Mr Shukla believes that Indian industry is ready to compete. For example, he points to the government's recent move to levy uniform taxes on both large, integrated companies and small producers - the "level playing field" that the large manufacturers have long demanded.
New Delhi says this decision demonstrates a resolve to free Indian producers to face the global market. "Those who can compete because of their organisational strength should be allowed to compete," said P. Chidambaram, finance minister, in his budget speech a fortnight ago.
Such sentiment re-affirms the process of liberalisation that has shaped India's textile and clothing industry since the early 1990s. This is a process that could also see a shakeout among Indian producers. Mr Sakthivel, from India's garment export council, says: "Small time suppliers may not survive in the new market. We have to recognise that."
印度服装业需重新“剪裁”
在新德里市郊的一座工厂里，几百名男工正埋头在缝纫机旁缝制女装，这些服装将送往美国零售商JC Penney等商店。
这些缝纫工每月挣50美元左右，他们不大可能去那些出售他们手工成品的美国购物中心参观。但有一点是明确的：到明年，西方消费者需求的飙升将使他们的队伍扩大两倍。
雇佣这批工人的是印度服装出口商Jyoti Apparels，该公司联合所有者基肖尔?马古(Kishore Magu)说，今年12月全球纺织品配额制度将取消，这将引发对长裤等产品的空前需求，而在以前，受配额限制，他不能生产这些产品。
他说：“在以前，我不得不抱着手臂说‘对不起，先生，因为配额，我不能执行你的订单’。但现在，我可以生产全套产品。”同时他还向我们展示了一款新式女裤设计，这是为美国品牌Sag Harbor设计的。
他的乐观基于这样的预测，那就是印度将紧随中国之后，成为配额制度取消后的最大受益者。麦肯锡(McKinsey)和敦豪公司(DHL)近期完成的一项研究报告显示，到2013年，印度纺织与服装出口产业的规模可能将高达300亿美元，而目前的规模大约是150亿美元。
印度的纺织和服装业计划在明年投资约20亿美元左右，用以扩大产能，以准备满足来自美国和欧盟买家的需求。随着为小国制定的配额取消，预计这些买家将增加发往几个供应大国的订单。
以马古先生为例，他计划建造两座新工厂，并雇佣500名以上的工人，这笔投资大约在1亿卢比(合120万英镑)。然而这暴露了印度服装生产商的一个弱点。
在印度，管理规模较小的单独工厂仍比建设大工厂要容易，因为根据该国劳动法，如果一个工厂雇佣员工超过100，那么就很难解雇其员工。因此业界认为，由于严厉的劳动法规，印度可能无法充分利用配额制终结带来的好处。
印度成衣出口促进协会(Apparel Export Promotion Council)是一家由政府资助的贸易团体，该机构主席阿?萨克蒂维尔(A. Sakthivel)说：“我们需要足够大的规模来迎合买家的需求。”但他表示，要扩大规模，印度需要更灵活的劳动法规，这种劳动法规要与生产率挂钩，并使工厂能在不受罢工威胁的情况下进行重组。另一个潜在障碍是印度落后得出了名的基础设施。
在印度南部，该国一些最大的纺织品和服装生产商仍无法享用足够的港口设施，因此许多运往美国的货物不得不取道附近的斯里兰卡或新加坡。
同时，尽管印度最近出台措施，要改革破产的电力部门，但印度工业客户支付的电费，通常要比它们的中国同行高30%。
此外，小规模纺织业生产商的偷电行为普遍存在。小厂家仍占据该行业的约半壁江山。
同时，与中国竞争对手相比，印度纺织业生产商继续在棉花上支付更多钱，这削弱了该国在棉花消费大国美国和欧盟的竞争力。
根据联合国贸易发展大会(Unctad)最近的一份报告，尽管印度拥有全球面积最大的棉花耕地，但每公顷产量只有300公斤，而中国每公顷产量为1000公斤。联合国贸发大会表示，要在配额制度结束后具有竞争力，印度就必须将棉花成本降低10%。
艾哈迈达巴德纺织厂协会的负责人阿布希纳夫?舒克拉(Abhinav Shukla)补充道：“电力和原材料成本都很高，但我们面临的主要威胁是高利率。”该协会的会员是Gap、利维斯(Levi's)和Dockers等品牌的供应商。
尽管在配额制终结后，印度要取得成功，就会面临上述强大的威胁，但舒克拉先生相信，印度的工业已为竞争做好准备。例如，他指出政府最近对大型综合公司和小生产商课征统一税收，这就是大型生产商长期以来所要求的“公平竞争”。
印度政府表示，该决定表明政府下决心放手让印度生产商面对国际市场。印度财长齐丹巴南(P. Chidambaram)两周前在预算演讲中表示：“对于那些因组织优势而能够竞争的公司来说，应该准许它们竞争。”
这种情绪再度肯定了自由化进程。自上世纪90年代以来，该进程一直在塑造印度纺织和服装产业。这个进程也可能会造成印度生产商之间的优胜劣汰。印度成衣出口促进协会的萨克蒂维尔先生表示：“二流供应商可能无法在这个新市场中生存。我们不得不认识到这一点。”
