The share of Khadi fabric in the total textile mill production has doubled to 8.49 per cent in five years to 2018-19, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission said Tuesday.

While the mill fabric production was 2,486 million square metres in the 2014-15 fiscal, the production of Khadi was 105.38 million square metres — showing a share of 4.23 per cent of the overall textiles production.

The mill fabric production dropped to 2,012 million square metres in 2018-19 while the Khadi fabric production was 170.80 million square metres — a share of 8.49 per cent in overall fabric production.

Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena said the rise in Khadi fabric production from 4.23 per cent to 8.49 per cent could be possible due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clarion call to adopt Khadi.

“It is encouraging for us that rise in share of Khadi production in the textiles sector in the last five years has gone from 4.23 per cent to 8.49 per cent, which is more than 200 per cent. While from 1956 to 2013-14, the Khadi sector fabric production could reach the figure of 105.38 million square metres, in the last five years (from 2014-15 to 2018-19) it produced another 65.42 square million metres,” he said.

Saxena further said that the number of artisans are increasing in the Khadi sector because of the new policies and initiatives taken by MSME Ministry and KVIC in recent years.

“We started registration of new Khadi institutions for widening the scope for employment as well as revival of defunct Khadi institutions, consequently rising the artisans number to 4,94,684.

Not only that, the KVIC had also laid stress on many artisan-centric programmes since 2015 like distribution of 32,000 New Model Charkhas and 5,600 modern looms,” he added.

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