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The Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) is convening a meet of stakeholders in Coimbatore on September 26.
Different textile-related forums/associations have been invited to take part in the meeting to discuss and put forth the sector’s demand in one-voice to the government, said CITI Chairman T Rajkumar.
CITI plans to compile and the industry demands and submit the list to the government by October 15.
Hailing the various measures initiated by the government to revive the economy, Rajkumar said the textile industry is no exception to the meltdown. “We met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last Wednesday and explained our situation. While indicating her readiness to bail the textile industry out of its present imbroglio, Sitharaman asked us to consolidate, highlight and submit a report on the industry’s plight. This meeting is aimed at eliciting the issues from the different textile associations across the value chain.”
Earlier at a meeting convened jointly by CITI, Texprocil and the Southern India Mills Association (SIMA), Rajkumar said the textile and clothing industry is under a severe liquidity crunch, mainly due to huge accumulation of TUF subsidies amounting to ₹12,000 crore (over the past six years) and RoSL/RoSCTL arrears since early March this year and GST refund.
“These should be released immediately. The government has sought updation on TUF subsidy release by September 30. Unfortunately, banks have done away with the TUF cell. We have therefore appealed for extension of time.”
Debt restructure
Rajkumar stressed the need for extension of debt restructure to the textile and clothing sector, similar to the MSME debt restructure package.
Texprocil Chairman KV Srinivasan said that the industry continues to suffer due to various external factors, and the spinning sector is at its worst. It is facing a crisis that is unprecedented in the last three decades. Production surplus and stagnation in yarn movement over the last four years, coupled with a steep slide in yarn exports of over 35 per cent in recent months, has aggravated the situation.
The impact has been more due to external reasons such as the US-China trade war, duty-free access enjoyed by Vietnam and other countries in Chinese market, delay in FTAs and so on.
“The situation is likely to worsen in the coming year” he said, emphasising the need for extending the export benefit to cotton yarn as well.
“Cotton yarn has been singled out under the RoTDEP (remission of Duties/Taxes on Export Products — the new export benefit scheme). This has to be included to make this capital-intensive sector competitive”.
Srinivasan further said that cotton yarn was outside the purview of interest subvention, suggesting the need for making it applicable to all sectors of the textile industry.
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