SME Times News Bureau | 13 Feb, 2012
Due to rising demand from the US, handicrafts exports for country grew by 24 percent year-on-year to USD 178 million in January, said latest data provided by the Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH).

In January last year, these exports stood at USD 143 million, it said.

"We are getting good response from the US markets, besides new markets like Latin America and Africa," EPCH Executive Director Rakesh Kumar said.

He, however, said demand is sluggish in the European market due to fragile economic growth.

The US and European Union together account for 70 per cent of the country's handcraft exports.

The council is expecting to achieve the export target of USD 2.7 billion in the current fiscal.

"We have done well in the past few months. We expect to achieve the target as exports orders are usually more in the last three months of the fiscal," Kumar said.

In the 2010-11 fiscal, these exports touched USD 2.3 billion in value terms.

During April-January this fiscal, handicrafts exports went up by about 19 per cent to USD 1.8 billion from USD 1.5 billion in the same period of last fiscal.

The handicrafts sector employs one million people. Moradabad, Jaipur, Saharanpur and Jodhpur are the major handicraft hubs in the country catering to global markets.