ludhiana a meeting of sewing machines and parts manufacturers was held on sunday at the office of sewing machine technology park cluster smtpc the agenda of the meeting was to discuss about upcoming state budget and also to send suggestions to the state finance minister for implementing these at the earliestgiving more information jagbir singh sokhi president smtpc said the sewing machine industry is facing severe crisis due to high rates of steel and rising cost of labour during last one year alone our cost of production of sewing machine parts has almost doubled and unfortunately we have not been able to increase the rates of our finished products in the same proportion thereby we are suffering huge losses in wake of this situation we need handholding from the state government in providing easy finance to us from banks and financial institutions in addition to this the rate of interest should also be charged nominally from the businessmenaccording to tarun arora president of sewing machine assemblers and dealers association the sewing machine industry is in the dire needs of technological upgradation at this moment because we have still not been able to manufacture highend industrial sewing machines which have huge market in india and abroad we urge the punjab finance minister that keeping in view that ludhiana is the hub of sewing machine industry special technological upgradation centre should be opened here specifically for the sewing machine industry so that we are able to develop industrial sewing machines and other new productsaccording to rajiv arora another sewing machine industrialist it is our request to the state government that it should scrap professional tax which is a big burden not only on the businessmen but on the government as wellothers who were present in this meeting included binny makhija sandeep singh chadha