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Threading money: File picture of the Union Minister for Textiles, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, at an NTC mill in Coimbatore. The industry, especially NTC, has benefited from the Technology Upgradation Funds Scheme.

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Nov. 7 The Textile Ministry’s flagship Technology Upgradation Funds Scheme (TUFS) has disbursed Rs 66,275 crore from its inception on April 1, 1999 till June 30, 2009 to modernise the country’s mills to face global competition.

This was stated by the Union Minister of Textiles, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, while addressing the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of his Ministry here.

Mr Maran said that the TUFS has stimulated additional investments of Rs 1,79,834 crore; benefited 25,809 textiles units, including 18,266 small units. The scheme had enabled the textiles industry to face global challenges successfully, reduced the cost of capital for acquisition of technology by 5 per cent, ignited growth of processing, garmenting and technical textiles sectors by extending 10 per cent capital subsidy, assisted powerloom units by extending 20 per cent margin money subsidy, and empowered the small-scale sector with 15 per cent capital subsidy.

“The entire textiles value chain from cotton ginning and pressing till the clothing/made-up stage has benefited under TUFS and the composite upgradation, spinning, processing and weaving segments of textiles chain are the major beneficiaries of TUFS,” Mr Maran said.

He added that Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, where textile-related activities have been carried out historically, are the major beneficiaries of the scheme.

The popularity of the scheme can be assessed from the fact that the allocation on account of interest support has been increasing from Rs 485 crore in 2005-06, to Rs 824 crore in 2006-07, and Rs 945 crore in 2007-08. This was then subsequently increased to Rs 1,198 crore against the budget provision of Rs 1,090 crore in 2008-09, Mr Maran added.

Giving an overview of the working of the National Textile Corporation, Mr Maran said that with the help of active support of the Government, the NTC has come out of the red and drawn up a plan to achieve a turnover of Rs 2,014 crore by 2014 from Rs 524 crore during 2008-09. The Textiles Ministry will make all out efforts to turn NTC into a profitable enterprise by enhancing the capacity utilisation of its mills (up to 80 per cent), reducing idle wages, launching aggressive marketing initiatives, and turning the corporation from a spinning company into an integrated textiles outfit with spinning, weaving, processing and garmenting facilities.

The Minister said the Textiles Ministry has taken the initiative for promoting Technical Textiles, and keeping in view the vast scope of growth in the segment. NTC had been asked to exploit the opportunities in this area. NTC is going to set up a Technical Textiles unit in its existing mills at Coimbatore, he said.

More Stories on : Textiles | Modernisation

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