Great opportunity for India to step up creative goods:UNCTAD

Hyderabad, Jun 4 (UNI) India could capitalise on the great opportunity provided by creative goods industry through appropriate Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) legislation.

India could identify products suitable for ''Geographical Indications (GI) in sectors like textiles, clothing and handicrafts, according to United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Deputy Secretary General(Acting) Lakshmi Puri.

Speaking at the regional conference on ''IPR protection through Geographical Indications'' here last night, she said India should take a leaf from European and North American countries, where the so called ''creative cities'' were proliferating, and develop such cities to revitalise the economy of urban centres through cultural and social developments offering attractive jobs to young people, including women.

For a vast country like India, with significantly diverse traditonal products it was essential to chalkout and implement a coherent strategy at the national and sub-national level through a government-community-NGO-based partnership model for GI protection for deriving maximum benefits that could arise from GI protection, she pointed out.

She said India, which was one among the top 20 exporters world-wide of creative goods along with China, Turkey, Thailand and Mexico, had improved its ranking from being 16th in 1996 to 11th in 2005. While India's market share of 2.4 per cent might not appear impressive compared to China's 18.3 per cent share, India had recorded the highest growth rate among the top 20 exporting countries during 2000-05.

''With 6.1 million USD exports, design is the largest contributor of trade of creative industries in India. It encompasses six main group of items- interior design, graphics, fashion accessories, jewellery, toys and architectural services,'' she said.

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