Govt to open footwear design institutes

Aiming to meet the requirement of skilled manpower in footwear industry, poised to grow at 20-30 per cent in the next few years, government will set up Footwear Design and Development Institutes (FDDI) in Chennai, Kolkata and Haryana. "There is a huge requirement of skilled manpower in the overall leather and footwear industry currently and to fill this gap, the government has agreed to set up new FDDIs in Chennai, Kolkata and Haryana," FDDI Secretary Shashi Bhushan said at a seminar on footwear industry on Saturday.

He, however, did not mentioned by when the institutes will be set up. Bhushan said besides Haryana, states like Punjab and Himachal Pradesh are also footwear manufacturing hubs and have scope for setting up such institutes. The first FDDI was established in 1986 at Noida in UP under the aegis of Ministry of Commerce for providing training and education in the footwear industry. The second FDDI has been set up in Rae Bareli which will start offering courses in 2008-09 session, Bhushan informed. The Indian footwear industry is undergoing a boom and is poised to grow at a whopping annual rate of 20-30 per cent in the next couple of years. Leather industry is expected to reach 20 billion dollar mark in turnover and 7 billion in export earnings by 2012, he said.