Surat: Chairman of Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), Pramod Kumar Agarwal has been appointed as the convenor of the ad-hoc committee formed to set up a national level domestic council for the promotion of the labour-intensive gems and jewellery sector.A meeting in this connection was held with the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) at New Delhi where several representatives from the gems and jewellery sector met and discussed on the structure of the council.Talking with TOI, Agarwal said, “We welcome the government’s decision to form the national domestic council for the Indian gem & jewellery industry. This will help make the small-scale domestic jewellery industry more organized.”According to Agarwal, the committee is inclusive and will formulate the Constitution and election rules.The committee comprises of representatives from the 14 associations of the working group for formation of Domestic Council for Gem & Jewellery. The domestic council would work on all the issues including the exports and pushing the growth of the sector at the domestic level.The country’s gems and jewellery export contracted by 8% to about $32.72 billion in 2017-18 owing to demand slowdown in major markets, including the US. According to the GJEPC data, the exports of gems and jewellery stood at $35.47 billion in 2016-17.

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