How India can compete in labour- intensive manufacturing
Lessons from a superstar exporter
一个超级明星出口商的教训
2024年9月26日 07:55 上午 |迈索尔
HARISH AHUJA is the chairman of Shahi Exports, India’s biggest exporter of clothes. Two things about his business surprise. With some 50 factories and $1bn in annual revenues, Shahi is managing to expand even as most peers in its sector struggle. It is also short of workers, says Mr Ahuja —at a time when many young Indians complain that their country offers too few jobs.
HARISH AHUJA是印度最大的服装出口商Shahi出口公司的董事长。关于他的商业惊喜有两件事。拥有约50家工厂和10亿美元年收入的Shahi正在设法扩张，尽管该行业的大多数同行都在苦苦挣扎。阿胡亚表示，印度还缺乏工人，而与此同时，许多印度年轻人抱怨他们的国家提供的工作机会太少。
Shahi’s experience helps inform a debate about India’s economy. The share of Indians who work in manufacturing is lower than in comparable countries, at 11%, and has not much budged for years (see chart 1). Exports of textiles and garments, one of the biggest sub-sectors, have actually fallen in value over a decade. Some economists think the time when India could develop through labour-intensive manufacturing of this sort has passed. Yet the achievements and challenges of a superstar exporter suggests that there are still lots of ways to help such firms grow.
沙希的经历有助于为一场关于印度经济的辩论提供信息。印度从事制造业的比例为11%，低于其他可比国家，而且多年来一直没有太大变化(见图表1)。作为印度最大的细分行业之一，纺织品和服装出口的价值在过去十年中实际上一直在下降。一些经济学家认为，印度可以通过这种劳动密集型制造业发展的时代已经过去了。然而，超级出口商的成就和挑战表明，仍然有很多方法可以帮助这些公司发展。
India’s clothing and textile industry is the third-largest sector by employment, after farming and construction. Yet only a fraction of its 45m workers labour in the formal industry, meaning for firms that are registered and pay tax. Shahi is the most successful exporter among those. It has made great leaps since it was founded in the early 1970s by Mr Ahuja’s mother, Sarla, in her home in New Delhi. These days most of its business is conducted in southern India.
印度的服装和纺织业是仅次于农业和建筑业的第三大就业部门。然而，在其4500万工人中，只有一小部分在正规行业工作，这意味着注册并纳税的公司。Shahi是其中最成功的出口商。自阿胡亚的母亲萨拉(Sarla)于20世纪70年代初在新德里的家中成立以来，该公司取得了巨大的飞跃。如今，它的大部分业务都在印度南部进行。
It does a lot of things differently from its competitors. More than many other Indian family businesses, Shahi has sought to place experienced professionals, not lucky scions, into its top jobs. The firm owns the mills that produce fabrics for its clothing, which makes it easier to meet tight deadlines imposed by the likes of Nike and Uniqlo. Demanding foreign buyers have helped instil good business practices, says an executive at a rival firm: in one Shahi factory, whiteboards help supervisors keep track of targets; its workers, mostly women, seem motivated. While Shahi has been accused of permitting poor working conditions in the past, it seems to have improved.
它在很多方面都与竞争对手不同。与许多其他印度家族企业相比，Shahi更倾向于让有经验的专业人士，而不是幸运的接班人担任高层职位。该公司拥有为其服装生产面料的工厂，这使得它更容易满足耐克(Nike)和优衣库(Uniqlo)等公司施加的紧迫期限。一家竞争对手公司的高管说，苛刻的外国买家帮助灌输了良好的商业实践:在沙希的一家工厂，白板帮助主管跟踪目标;它的员工，主要是女性，似乎很有动力。虽然沙希过去曾被指控允许恶劣的工作条件，但情况似乎有所改善。
In some other regards, however, Shahi has struggled to surmount limitations that also inhibit its peers. Despite being the market leader, it is smaller than you would expect: it accounts for only 2.5% of India’s exports of clothes and textiles. And it participates in an industry that, as a whole, exports far less than it could. Mr Ahuja compares India (and particularly West Bengal) with Bangladesh. They are in the “same region, [have the] same types of people, the same culture”. But Bangladesh exports four times as many clothes, by value.
然而，在其他一些方面，Shahi一直在努力克服同样抑制它的同行的局限性。尽管它是市场的领导者，但比你想象的要小:它只占印度服装和纺织品出口的2.5%。而且它所参与的行业，整体而言，出口远远低于它的能力。阿胡贾将印度(尤其是西孟加拉邦)与孟加拉国进行了比较。他们“在同一个地区，(拥有)相同类型的人，相同的文化”。但孟加拉国出口的服装价值是中国的四倍。
For some the explanation is poor education in India, which has left workers short of skills. But “anyone can be trained”, says Rags Ramanujam, Shahi’s chief executive. Weak infrastructure and insurance markets also get blamed. But an analysis by Gopal Nadadur, formerly of NITI Aayog, the government’s in-house think-tank, finds that transport and insurance costs are roughly the same in India, Bangladesh and Vietnam.
对一些人来说，原因是印度教育水平低下，导致工人缺乏技能。但是Shahi的首席执行官Rags Ramanujam说“任何人都可以接受培训”。薄弱的基础设施和保险市场也受到指责。但政府内部智库NITI Aayog的前成员戈帕尔·纳达杜尔(Gopal Nadadur)的一项分析发现，印度、孟加拉国和越南的运输和保险成本大致相同。
Instead three things hold India back. The first are labour laws. India’s Factories Act makes it next to impossible for firms with more than 100-300 employees (depending on the state) to fire workers. That makes them risk- averse, which affects how large they grow. Shahi lessens the impact of the law by requiring new staff to go through a one-month training programme, which tests whether they are up to snuff. But other firms get round the problem by using contract labour—which cuts their incentive to invest in training that might make staff more productive. A particular problem with firing restrictions is that they make it more difficult to shut a factory and relocate elsewhere. The chance of getting trapped in one place deters firms from investing. “The whole world would come to India,” Mr Ahuja thinks, if business became easier to do.
相反，有三件事阻碍了印度的发展。首先是劳动法。印度的《工厂法》规定，员工超过100-300人的公司(取决于各州)几乎不可能解雇员工。这让他们变得厌恶风险，这影响了他们的增长规模。Shahi通过要求新员工参加为期一个月的培训计划来减轻法律的影响，以测试他们是否合格。但其他公司通过使用合同工来规避这个问题，这减少了他们投资于培训的动机，而培训可能会提高员工的工作效率。解雇限制的一个特别问题是，它们使关闭工厂和搬迁到其他地方变得更加困难。被困在一个地方的机会阻碍了公司的投资。阿胡贾认为，如果生意变得更容易做，“全世界都会来印度。”
Shahi finds rules about overtime another challenge. In Karnataka, a south- western state in which it has a lot of factories, firms are required to pay overtime wages of double the standard rate if workers toil for more than 48 hours per week. In Bangladesh, where overtime wages are one and a half times the usual, firms often operate longer days.
Shahi发现关于加班的规则是另一个挑战。在印度西南部的卡纳塔克邦(Karnataka)，有很多工厂，如果工人每周工作超过48小时，公司就必须支付标准工资的两倍。在孟加拉国，加班工资是平时的1.5倍，公司经常延长工作时间。
The second thing limiting India is its trade restrictions. America revoked India’s duty-free status in 2019 because Donald Trump deemed India too protectionist. The EU puts tariffs of 10-12% on imports of clothing from India, while maintaining trade agreements with Bangladesh and Vietnam. This fee demolishes Indian exporters’ margins.
限制印度的第二件事是贸易限制。美国在2019年取消了印度的免税地位，因为唐纳德·特朗普认为印度保护主义太强。欧盟对从印度进口的服装征收10-12%的关税，同时维持与孟加拉国和越南的贸易协议。这一费用降低了印度出口商的利润率。
The third big barrier is that even manufacturers who are eager to expand can find it difficult to persuade Indian workers to leave farms and join factories full time (see chart 2). Indians sometimes feel compelled to carry on farming land that has been passed down through their family for decades. A popular rural welfare scheme adds to the advantages of village life. Youngsters who do find jobs in the cities sometimes still return to their villages to work the harvest—in part because harvest-time labouring pays wages that are only a bit lower than those paid by many entry-level manufacturing jobs. Were textile firms bigger and more profitable, they might be able to offer salaries high enough to overcome this; as things stand, they often cannot.
第三大障碍是，即使是渴望扩张的制造商也很难说服印度工人离开农场，全职加入工厂(见图表2)。印度人有时觉得不得不继续耕种他们家族几十年的土地。受欢迎的农村福利计划增加了农村生活的优势。在城市找到工作的年轻人有时仍会回到农村从事收割工作，部分原因是收割时的工资只比许多初级制造业工作的工资低一点点。如果纺织企业规模更大，利润更高，它们可能会提供足够高的工资来克服这一问题;就目前的情况来看，他们往往做不到。
Both Mr Ahuja and Mr Nadadur think that, as a result of all this, workers are some 20-30% more productive in Bangladesh than in India. As for Vietnam, another competitor, it has higher wages but also more business- friendly rules and better access to big Western markets.
Ahuja先生和Nadadur先生都认为，这一切的结果是，孟加拉国工人的生产力比印度工人高出约20-30%。至于另一个竞争对手越南，它有更高的工资，但也有更有利于商业的规则，更容易进入西方大市场。
What can be done? India’s government seems to understand the issues, but politics gets in the way. Amended labour laws were passed a few years ago. But their implementation has stalled at the state level. In any case, say firms, the reforms have not tackled their biggest concerns. Goodies that have supposedly been made available through the government’s flagship industrial-subsidy scheme (“production-linked incentives”, or PLIs) are “too hard to get”, says Mr Ahuja. The subsidy requires a minimum size of investment. Most clothes-makers do not qualify because they split big investments across a number of factories in order to make sure that they are close to workers.
我们能做些什么?印度政府似乎理解这些问题，但政治阻碍了这一进程。几年前通过了修订后的劳动法。但它们在州一级的实施却停滞不前。企业说，无论如何，改革并没有解决他们最大的担忧。Ahuja先生说，通过政府的旗舰工业补贴计划(“生产挂钩激励”，简称PLIs)提供的好处“很难得到”。补贴规定了最低投资规模。大多数服装制造商不符合条件，因为它们将大笔投资分散在多家工厂，以确保这些工厂离工人近。
A newer government scheme, “employment-linked incentives”, pays the first month of a newly hired worker’s wages, and a portion of their first year’s salary after that. In theory that may help firms allay their worries about taking on more staff, and perhaps help them pay wages that can attract workers all year round. But it is only a small step towards solving manufacturers’ problems. It is time the government stitched together a much more ambitious plan.
一项新的政府计划，“就业挂钩激励”，支付新雇佣工人第一个月的工资，然后支付他们第一年工资的一部分。从理论上讲，这可能有助于企业减轻对雇佣更多员工的担忧，并可能帮助它们支付可以全年吸引员工的工资。但这只是解决制造商问题的一小步。政府是时候制定一个更雄心勃勃的计划了。
