This refers to “European shoe makers turn to India as China loses price edge” (November 24). As the piece points out, China is becoming uncompetitive due to rising costs and its currency appreciating against the dollar. This is a great opportunity for India and one that was just waiting to happen. Just as in our IT sector, rising wages were always certain to cut into China’s advantage. The problem, however, is that even though China losing its competitive edge, there is no other supplier as big as China in the rest of the world — just as there is no other country which can do as much IT/ITeS work as India can. So even though foreign buyers will come to India, they will find that the shipping and other delays here are equally costly and will eventually gravitate back to China. This is the problem with not reforming the sector fast enough — even when there’s an opportunity, we will not be able to make the most of it. This is also what happened in the case of the textiles and garments sector after the quotas were removed. India did gain, but not to the extent that was expected.
Santhosh Nair, New Delhi
