NEW DELHI – 7th August’2021 – The Union Government of India had declared 7th of August as the National Handloom Day in 2015 with an objective of creating awareness about the importance of the handloom sector to the socio economic development of the country. Handloom sector is a symbol of the country’s glorious cultural heritage and an important source of livelihood in the country. The sector is key to women empowerment as over 70% of handloom weavers and allied workers are women, said Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Director General-EPCH.
Dr. Kumar informed that the ministry of textiles, Government of India celebrated 7th National Handloom Day in New Delhi and Piyush Goyal, Minister of Textiles, Commerce & Industry, Govt. of India addressed the handloom craft weavers along with Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Minister of State for Textiles, U P Singh, Secretary Ministry of Textiles, Govt of India, Sanjay Rastogi, Development Commissioner (Handloom), other dignitaries and Raj Kumar Malhotra, Chairman-EPCH virtually attended the occasion and a large number of stakeholders, handloom craft artisans attended the occasion virtually.
The Minister of Textiles, Govt. of India during the occasion inaugurated the Handloom craft village, Kaziranga park, Kaniham Handloom Craft Village, Srinagar and Kovlam, Kerala and announced linkage of the same with tourism, Setting-up of Design Resource Centre, marketing support centre for Handloom products, 125 producers groups companies setup and 1,50,000 weavers of handloom craft sector connected with the `GEM’ portal. Minister also emphasized that the present handloom production of Rs. 60,000 crores is to be doubled to Rs.1,25,000 crores. Export of handloom is also to be doubled in next 3 years, informed Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Director General-EPCH.
Dr. Kumar further informed that on the occasion of “National Handloom Day”, the Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) today also organized series of activities on PAN India like Webinar on Trend & Forecast Autumn/Winter 2022 focused on Handloom for the benefit of our members, organized a workshop at International Trade Centre, Narsapur, Andhra Pradesh and SFURTI programme on Women’s Empowerment- Role of Women Weavers / Artisans in Economic Development coupled with free eye testing camp for weavers organized at different handloom clusters (SFURTI) in Assam, Manipur and Nagaland.
The exports of handicrafts for April-March of the current financial year 2020-21 is at Rs. 25679.98 crores (US$ 3459.75million) registering a marginal growth of 1.62 % (Rupee terms) and (-) 2.93 % (dollar terms) over the same period last year. However, as far as exports for the month of (April-June) 2021-22 (provisional) is at Rs. 4642.76 crores (US$ 629.27million) and a growth of 82.89% in Rupees terms and 88.09% in Dollar terms, informed by Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Director General-EPCH.
