The Hindu Business Line : Kannur NIFT : Stone-laying on Feb 17

Thiruvananthapuram, Feb. 12 The foundation stone for the proposed centre of the National Institute for Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Kannur will be laid on February 17.

The centre, spread over 12 acres of land, will be the ninth such facility of NIFT in the country. It is expected to help increase manifold textiles export from Kannur, which is home to the maximum number of textile units in Kerala. Last year, the textiles export from Kannur region was to the tune of Rs 350 crore.

Though the Centre was initially willing to establish only a satellite centre of NIFT in Kannur, it later conceded to the demand of the State Government to have a full-fledged centre of the institute, according to officials in the Industries Department.

Seed capital

The centre is estimated to cost a total of Rs 50 crore and the State Government will provide it as seed capital over a couple of years. It is pointed out that the Kannur NIFT centre will in the course of time facilitate establishment of satellite units of the institute in other major textiles manufacturing centres in the State such as Balaramapuram near Thiruvananthapuram.

The handloom sector provides employment to the largest number of traditional labourers next to the coir sector. The modernisation of the traditional sectors was one of the policy initiatives of the State Government and the linkage of the textiles industry with NIFT is expected to help achieve the objective to a large extent, the officials said.

At present, the State’s textiles sector is mainly engaged in labour work with the other requirements like fashion and design being sourced from outside. The NIFT centre, apart from offering courses in fashion technology, will assist the industry in areas such as development of designs and capacity building.

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