Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC)’s additional secretary general Vijay Mathur has said that India garment makers should revisit the policy of Maximum Retail Price (MRP) to achieve parity at the international apparel market.

Mathur’s comment came at the launch of the World Bank’s “Stitches to Riches” report in New Delhi last week.

“Our packaging and labeling requirements are much more stringent than EU. The policy of MRP, sizing etc. should be revisited to achieve parity at the international apparel market,” he said.

Mathur said India’s growth in the global apparel sector which has been slow, could have been accelerated if the country tried to adopt international practices. He hoped that when the India-EU FTA is signed, it will give India a level playing vis-à-vis Bangladesh which currently has an advantage in the EU markets. Indian apparel sector suffers from a perception problem, he said.

“We need to dispel the negative perception of India in the mind of foreign investors who think that the Indian trade scenario is sluggish. We have been advocating an increase in the overtime working hours from 50 hours a quarter to 50 hours a month to increase the overall production.”

Mathur also said that the current research and development policy does not recognize the R&D activities prevalent in the Indian apparel industry and the policy needs to broaden its scope and definition. It needs to consider the experiments in color and fibre under taken by the industry for sample generation, as it is an important step towards business generation, he added.