'India, China must cooperate, not compete, in textiles'

India's Textiles Minister Shankersinh Vaghela Thursday stressed the need for Asian countries to come together to enhance competitiveness and harness their advantages to withstand global competition.

The minister, in his inaugural address at the two-day Asian Textile Conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry, said Asian countries like India and China had emerged as forces to reckon with in the quota-free regime and the challenge was for them to operate in a coordinated manner to leverage advantages like low labour costs and easy availability of raw materials.

The minister also expressed the need to institutionalise inter-relationship between trade, export promotion bodies and the various departments responsible for operating export promotion schemes.

"As the competition in the sector intensifies globally factor endowments like strong raw material base, an expanding manmade fibre industry and a large pool of technical and managerial manpower with infusion of new funds will bring buoyancy to the industry," he said.