The Hindu Business Line : NTC proposal to set up 7 new mills gets GoM panel nod

New Delhi, Aug. 7 The Group of Ministers (GoM) on textiles industry on Thursday gave its formal nod to the proposal of the National Textile Corporation (NTC) to go ahead with setting up 7 new mills, four to be directly run by NTC and another three as joint ventures, as part of its strategy to modernise 42 mills under its umbrella.

While 22 mills would be directly modernised by the holding company, NTC, another 20 modernisation projects for mills would be executed through roping in private partners by way of joint ventures.

The GoM met here under the chairmanship of the Union Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar. Besides, the Union Textile Minister, Mr Shankarsinh Vaghela, the Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, the Heavy Industries Minister, Mr Santosh Mohan Dev, and the Labour Minister, Mr Oscar Fernandes, attended the meeting.

Highly placed sources in the Government told Business Line here that NTC proposes to set up the four new mills in Karnataka, Gujarat, Rajasthan and in Maharashtra.

The sources said that over and above the these new proposals cleared on Thursday by the GoM, the Corporation has appointed a consultant to prepare the second modified revival scheme for modernising 22 mills, keeping in view the extant trends of the textile industry.

In this scheme, it is proposed to further expand the spindle capacity wherever land space is available in the mills in order to ensure the benefits from the economies of scale. The total capital outlay for modernising 22 mills would now be reckoned at Rs 1,155 crore, against Rs 530 crore proposed in the first modified revival scheme.

So far, NTC has completed modernisation of five mills, with the total machinery received and commissioned by December 2007, In another 16 mills, most of the machineries, except speed frames and ring frames, were procured with the schedule for completion of modernisation of all 22 mills set by December 2008, the sources said

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