Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being shed in India as export markets plunge.
The country has been hard-hit by the global economic crisis which has seen demand for Indian-made goods tumble to their lowest levels in decades.
The crisis is so bad some are predicting that job losses in export industris in India will climb to 1.5 million as early as March.
Officials from the Commerce Department, and export organizations, say an estimated one million workers have lost jobs in the past four months. Another 500,000 job .
The president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations, A. Sakthivel, says many importing companies in the West have cancelled orders since the downturn in the global economy began last year.
'If you see the export figures from October-November-December-January, it shows there is a downtrend. There is a reduction or minor growth rate. Already people are giving less working hours and less working days,' said Sakthivel.
In January, exports fell by 20% with govrnment forecasts for factoiry closures. .
India's export sector is labor intensive, and employs about 150 million people across the country - the largest number in any industry after farming.
Source : www.britainnews.net