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MADURAI, Feb. 16

A SYNERGY of three sectors, namely, fashion apparel, biotechnology and information technology seem to hold the key for a transformation of the Madurai economy.

Dr R. Jayaraman, Member Secretary, Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED), said that agricultural biotechnology can boost the productivity as well as the quality of cotton crop grown in substantial tracts of blacksoil in the southern districts and information technology in the form of Computer Aided Designing (CAD)/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) can make the garments worthy of exports.

He explained that export oriented garments can be made only with fine variety yarn and fabric and hence, the need to enhance the quality of cotton crop using biotechnology. The biotechnology departments in universities should undertake research activities beneficial to surrounding areas, he added.

Likewise, CAD can improve the range of products. It was this realisation of the potential inherent in these sectors that a State-level seminar on development of these three sectors was organised by the Department of Entrepreneurship Studies, Madurai Kamaraj University, here last month, he said.

Besides this, there are also possibilities for these sectors to develop individually, independent of each other.

For instance, there are possibilities for prospective biotechnological entrepreneurs to outsource research and development works of leading pharmaceutical companies.

With abundant technical expertise in biotechnology available with the Madurai Kamaraj University, the possibilities for this sector to progress with core competency appeared bright, he mentioned. For fashion apparel, the industry watchers feel a fashion technology institute at this juncture can do much good to integrate the efforts of as many as 450 garment manufacturers into forming into a consortium in order to have common facility centres and having an insight into identifying markets. E-commerce can play a crucial role in identifying overseas markets for `businessman to businessman' and `businessman to client' transactions, added Dr Jayaraman.

Speaing further, he said the contention of bankers was that the banking system would always be helpful to entrepreneurs who submitted practicable project reports.

But the industry sources felt that the real thrust can be accorded to fashion apparel only by sensitising the bankers of the need to finance sick units under the TUF (Technology Upgradation Fund) scheme.

Dr Jayaraman pointed out that the entrepreneurs, particularly, those with units in the Uranganpatti industrial estate, developed exclusively for development of hosiery units, are puzzled by the refusal of the banks to fund sick units, when the very purpose behind the massive scheme introduced by the Union Textiles Ministry was to revive the dying industry and make it export oriented.

Unfortunately, at present, the banks have been vying with one another to finance healthy units and unless this type of thinking changed, the stagnancy in the contribution of the core sector, mainly, the textile sector for Madurai economy would continue. Nevertheless, in order to create the right mindset in the long run, academics have called for introduction of entrepreneurism as a subject at the school level itself. With Governmental jobs on the decline, it would be anachronistic to think of professional courses as a panacea for career growth, he added.

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