``In conjunction with the modernisation of the sector, new marketing technologies like e-business as well as on-line designing needs to be tapped to fully exploit the potential of this sector,'' said sources in the textile ministry.

Despite low cost of labour, the country's advantage in the sector had been blunted considerably with it being cast as a mere low value player in the global market. Industry experts point out that the market penetration of the Indian textile exporters was more when the market size was small and when the number of exporters were limited to a few.

Awareness of information technology in the sector has been abysmally low as per a recent review by the government. Several factors like cost of production, cotton yield,taxation as well as quality control of the final products have made the Indian exports suffer owing to lack of use of the latest technologies, the review says.

Lack of product development facilities as well as inability to predict design trends were some of the major bottlenecks for the industry as compared to the products from competitors in the South East Asia.

With changing consumer preferences as well as constantly changing role of distributors, it has become essential for the Indian industry to upgrade its skills. This would assure that goods were being produced in accordance to that of the international standards in order to effectively meet the requirements of the global clientele, experts say. Experts also point out that investment for modernisation in the sector had been inadequate and had suffered a mismatch when compared to the timing of those production cycles. ``Without modernisation, it would be near impossible for the domestic textile industry to compete in a free trade environment oncethe WTO regime is implemented,'' industry sources point out.

The upgradation of the skills needs to be backed by the adequate use of two technologies in the textile and the IT sectors to generate advantages for the mutual benefit of both the sectors.

The convergence of the two areas like the textiles and information technology would further provide high scope for the development of a wide variety of CAD-CAM software and hardware products. Even the designing and development of textiles could be possible to small industries on-line by using the Internet.

There is thus an immense need for the textiles industry in the country to move along with the changes taking place in the global market, experts point out.

The Indian textile industry stood second only to China in the production of fibre used in the textile industry. And with the availability of the dual advantage of technology with the low costs would help in propelling the sector as one of the major forex earner in the coming months.