By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, FEB 04, 2020: THE ground-breaking ceremony for a Common Facility Centre (CFC) in Bow Bazar, Kolkata took place on 30.01.2020 in the presence of Rupa Dutta, Economic Adviser, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Pramod Agrawal, Chairman, Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) and senior officials from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, GJEPC and Swarno Shilpo Bachao Committee (SSBC).

The CFC will benefit one lakh artisans engaged in the manufacture of handmade jewellery in and around Bowbazar, a major jewellery hub of Kolkata. The CFC at Bow Bazar will enhance the productivity and quality of products, especially the small gem and jewellery units in Bow Bazar and its surrounding areas by introducing cutting edge technology in jewellery manufacturing amongst the karigars of the industry in the Kolkata gem & jewellery cluster.

Ministry of Commerce & Industry has taken a host of initiatives at the grassroots level for increasing the efficiency and empowering the MSMEs of the Indian gem and jewellery industry. Apart from introducing trade-friendly policies for the sector, the Ministry is also facilitating the industry through creation of infrastructure in the form of CFCs.

Setting up of CFCs across the country to help the marginal workers to upgrade their product quality and output have been carried out through Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) with the help of Local Trade Association (LTA) of the respective manufacturing hubs. The Council has already set up CFCs at major diamond clusters in Gujarat like Amreli, Palanpur, Visnagar and Junagadh. These CFCs are operational and have made the MSME units export worthy. A jewellery CFC is also being set up at Coimbatore and is expected to be completed by March 2020.

The objective of setting up CFCs is to give the small and medium jewellery manufacturing units access to a common pool of high-end and capital-intensive state-of-the-art machinery/equipment which is otherwise unaffordable for individual small and medium jewellery manufacturers.

Economic Advisor, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Rupa Dutta, said that the e xports of gem and jewellery accounts for USD 40 billion annually employing more than five million people across the country. The industry has a huge potential to grow and it is the aim of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to boost exports in this sector to USD 75 billion by 2025 added Economic Advisor.

She further said that CFC is one of the initiatives where the effort is to enhance the productivity and quality of products of MSME units and make them contribute to exports.

At present, the SME units, located in small towns like Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Rajkot and interior villages are still operating with old technology, and this has affected the quality of the finished goods produced. The artisans/goldsmiths in these places undertake the work on job-work-basis from wholesale jewellery manufacturer/retail jewellers. They use out dated technology to manufacture the jewellery. Usage of technology like casting technology, finishing techniques like tumbling and magnetic polisher are being used only in a few of the units. Bench work is also carried out by using old techniques.

The CFCs will empower the trade in this sector and increase overall productivity, yield and timely delivery. It will make the trade self-sustainable by offering all types of services to meet the requirements of their clients under one roof. CFCs will be instrumental to generate more revenue for the SMEs and will be a tool for socio-economic transformation of the region.

Performance of CFCs

The jewellery CFC at Kolkata, once established, will help the local handmade jewellery sector to enhance the value addition and help the jewellers to compete with the best. The CFC at Kolkata is expected to be operational by April this year.