The Hindu Business Line : Sisspa urges Govt to ease import norms for used textile machinery

THE South India Small Spinners Association (Sisspa) has asked the Union Government to ease the import restrictions related to the used spinning machines considering the compulsion for the domestic spinning industry to speed up replacing of the outdated machines and the huge waiting period maintained by the domestic machinery industry for delivery of new spinning machinery range.

Spinning industry's programme of replacing the existing old machines with technologically advanced version machines under the technology upgradation fund scheme (TUFS) faced difficulty as major indigenous machinery manufacturers keep a protracted delivery period extending up to 36 months. This has affected the pace of the textile industry modernisation.

To overcome this, Sisspa has asked the Union Government to allow import of second-hand spinning machinery of 10-year vintage. Such machinery import could be made TUFS compatible and can be run for a specific three-year period with a concessional rate of customs duty under OGL, it added.

The association, which has made this suggestion in its pre-Budget memorandum separately addressed to the Union Finance Ministry and the Textile Ministry, has also reiterated its earlier demand for removing the minimum economic size (MES) stipulation for spinning industry modernisation under the TUFS, which is linked to the `blow-room' machinery utilisation.

It argued that while MES criteria in TUFS has been fixed taking into account the utilisation of blow room machinery, in reality, the textile mills manufacturing 20s count would only require one full blow-room machine line to feed 4,000 spindles.

Whereas, the mills producing yarns of higher counts, say 80s or 100s, will have their blow-room machine utilisation levels hardly at 30 per cent even if these mills are equipped with 12,000 spindles. Hence, the blow-room utilisation could not be a yardstick to fix the MES and, therefore, the MES and spindleage criteria should be done away with, it said.

The association, which has called for extending the TUFS's time-limit up to 2010 to achieve the desired levels of modernisation of the industry, has urged the Union Government to reduce the excise duty on synthetic fibres from 16 per cent to 8 per cent to encourage its consumption among the textile manufacturers.

It also appealed to the Union Government to work out a capital and interest subsidies programme for investment in wind turbines through the Department of Non-Conventional Energy Resources, which will help bring down the cost of power and special subsidy for combers and autoconers used by the textile industry to enhance value added textile production.

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