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e a significant increase of exports. As mentioned earlier, although over 90 percent of Sri Lanka’s garment exports are destined for the USA and the EU, Sri Lanka does not rank amongst the top exporting nations to the EU. Sri Lanka ranked 20th and 16th place among suppliers of apparel products to the EU and the USA market, respectively, in 1998. The positive feature is that the Sri Lankan garment manufacturers, in general, have built up a good rapport and sound reputation the world over. It is a great advantage when compared to her competing neighbours.

17.Buyers now have a range of sources from which to choose, and countries such as Mexico (supplying to the USA) and Turkey (supplying to the EU) have the added advantages of being in close proximity to their major markets, lower transport cost and shorter turn-around times. Moreover, Mexico and free of quota restrictions access to their major markets.

18.One factor contributing to this reduced level of price competitiveness is the increasing cost of labour in Sri Lanka compared to other garment producing nations. Labour costs have been steadily increasing and currently constitute between 15-30 percent of total production costs in the average Sri Lankan garment manufacturing firm, highlighted the hourly wage rates of a number of garment manufacturing nations and indicated that Sri Lanka’s competitors currently have relatively lower wage cost structures. For those competitors who gave higher wage cost structures (and higher global market shares), their strengths lie particularly in their high levels of productivity.

HOW SHOULD WE FACE THE COMPETITION?

18.The researcher recommends the following changes to preserve the garment industry in Sri Lanka.

Developing Skills Of Labour Force

The skill level on high speed machines have been found to be in sufficient. This resulted in low efficiency levels and low Needle Down Time. Which are two important performance measurements in the garment industry. Intensive training to upgrade skill level, parallel to technological advancement is important to gain a competitive advantage in the garment industry.

b.Establishment of a Government Administered Garment industry related training institute. It is recommended to the government, at least at this stage to focus on this issue, and establish a dedicated training institute for all levels of employees in the apparel industry, as the future of thee industry and employment of 350000 personnel will purely depend on countries competitiveness on productivity and cost of labour.

e.Increasing Needle Down Time

(1)Use of Modern Machinery

Needle down time could be increased through training and use of modern advanced machinery. Introduction of modern machines as under bed trimmers and computerised machines will speed up the sewing process and assist the operator to use other advanced facilities of the machines.

(2)Reduction of secondary activities

Needle Down Time (NDT)could be further increased by following General Sewing Data Standards, which indicates the ideal movements by machine operators to reduced idle time and speed up the sawing process.

f.Backward Integration. Due to lack of modernisation and technological advancement in the textile manufacturing sector the garment industry has to depend for its requ