Mumbai, April 24: Global retail chain Wal-Mart will set up two more sourcing offices in India by the middle of this year.

“We are planning to set up one office in Mumbai and the other in Delhi by the middle of this year,” says S. Ramesh, GM (India & Sri Lanka) global procurement of Wal-Mart.

The offices will do quality assurance work for Wal-Mart’s global procurement and sourcing business.

“The Mumbai office will look after sourcing of textiles, apparel, gems and jewellery, while the Delhi office will concentrate on stainless steel and home decoration products and apparel,” he added.

It also plans to hire close to 10 associates for its Mumbai and Delhi offices.

“We plan to have close to 126 people in India by the end of this year,” says Ramesh.

Wal-Mart’s office in Bangalore serves as the company’s global procurement hub for sourcing of merchandise from India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. There are close to 80 employees in the Bangalore office.

In 2005, Wal-Mart purchased approximately $1.5 billion in goods from factories and third-party suppliers in India for its retail stores globally compared with $1.2 billion worth of products in 2004.

About one-third of this amount was purchased directly by Wal-Mart’s global procurement office in Bangalore. Major categories sourced from India include home textiles, apparel, fine jewellery and house wares.

Although the company does not source food products at this point, it has carried out test shipment of black pepper from the country.

Regarding its tieup with the Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Group, Ramesh said, “We do not have any direct sourcing from Bharti at this time.”