25th Indian Handicrafts & Gifts Fair started in noida
28 Feb 2008

MINISTER OF TEXTILES, SHANKER SINH VAGHELA INAUGURATES HANDICRAFTS AND GIFTS FAIR

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The 25th edition of the Indian Handicrafts & Gifts Fair(Spring), 2008 was inaugurated by Hon'ble Shanker Sinh Vaghela, Union Cabinet Minister for Textiles at a colourful ceremony at India Expo Centre & Mart, Greater Noida Expressway, New Delhi on 28th February, 2008 at 11.00 AM.   Present on the occasion were senior officials of the Government of India, leading luminaries of Industry and trade and office bearers and officials of EPCH and India Exposition Mart  Sudhir Tyagi, Chairman-EPCH,  Navratan Samdria, Chairman – IEML,  Sanjay Agarwal DC(Handicrafts),  Rakesh Kumar, Executive Director-EPCH etc.  The inaugural ceremony was also witnessed by a large number of foreign buyers from different countries. Speaking at the inaugural ceremony  Vaghela lauded the role of handicrafts sector in Indian economy and in particular Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts in promoting handicrafts exports.  Handicrafts sector plays an important role in employment generation at the grass root level and increase in exports directly results in employment generation.  Due to this social angle, Government of India attaches great importance to this sector and to this Fair. 
 
This edition of the Handicrafts and Gifts Fair has some new elements and special features. This is the first time that the display in the fair has been divided in to specialized and segmented sections on the basis of broad product categories rather than general and multiple display of all product categories in all the halls as is the past.  This fair has 5 major different sections viz. Fashion Jewellery, Christmas Decorations, Furniture, Home Textiles and General Decoration Handicrafts.   While the ground floor of the India Expo Centre and Mart will have multiple product display, other floors will be dedicated to product specific groups for display.  This has been done to make it convenient overseas buyers to directly visit the product sections of their interest rather than visiting all the fair.  This will help in better utilization of time of the foreign buyers and thereby enabling more attention to the exhibitors and to the products.
 
Another feature of this fair is the duration of the fair has been extended to 6 days from 4 days.  The objective is again to enable foreign buyers to have more time to see various product categories on display.  This was considered necessary as there are more than 2000 exhibitors in the handicrafts and gifts fair who are displaying more than 900 types, styles, variety, designs, raw material base and colours of the products spread over more than 80000 sq. mtrs. of space.  Such a vast magnitude of fair was making it difficult for foreign buyers to see the total fair in the limited time of 4 days earlier available.   6 days duration now will enable foreign buyers to do justice to their visit, to the products on display and to the exhibitors.  
 
It is hoped that 6 days long Handicrafts and Gifts Fair will generate more the Rs. 750 crores of business.