'50,000 engineering jobs likely to be lost '
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 15:56 IST   |    3 Comments
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'50,000 engineering jobs likely to be lost '
Chennai: The ongoing recession will take away about 50,000 more jobs across the engineering industry - auto-components, textile machinery, forgings and castings, said EEPC India, the apex body of engineering exporters. "Till last year, the engineering sector had 35 percent year-on-year growth. But with the impact of the economic downturn, we may register 20 percent negative growth in this quarter", EEPC India National Vice Chairman Mahesh K Desai said, adding that the coming quarters would see a further dip and if this trend continues there may be 50,000 jobs lost in these sectors, he said. Eighty percent of its members were Small and Medium Enterprises, and most companies are in operation despite poor businesses. Nothing had been mentioned about the stimulus packages' announced by the Centre and SMEs were the largely hit by the downturn, Desai said. According to Desai, Tamil Nadu with a good engineering hub, would be the first to be hit by the recession followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana. He suggested that banks come forward to give 'packaging credit' at very reasonable rate of interest for the sector and extend packaging period from the present 180 days to 360 days, at least during the recession period. Stating that 40 percent of engineering goods exported to the U.S. and European markets have been largely hit by recession, Desai said innovative upgradation of engineering products and services and cultivation of new markets like Latin America, Common Wealth of Independent States was the need of the hour. Exports of engineering products to Latin American countries have risen from $1001.83 million in 2006-07 to $1152.93 million in 2007-08.

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