Textile infrastructure gets Rs 1860 crore budget boost

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Feb 6, 2017

Textile infrastructure has received a major boost from the government as Rs 1860 crore has been allocated in the budget for building textile parks, incubation facilities, processing and development centres.

The provision for textile infrastructure has been increased to Rs 1,860 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 506 crore in FY17, which will be used for the Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana to promote employment in the sector.

“Though there are no new schemes or programmes specifically for the textiles or garment industry, the Budget has several provisions that will help the sector to grow faster,” Rahul Mehta, President of the Clothing Manufacturers Association of India told the Economic Times.

However, the government has cut down support to the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS), which is used to promote technical textiles and generate employment in the apparel and garment sectors.

The budgetary allocation is down from Rs 2,610 crore in FY17 to Rs 2,013 crore now.

“The allocation for the textile industry used to go for ATUFS but the industry felt that besides modernisation, more is needed in infrastructure such as plug and play facilities. So, the allocation is in the right direction as will improve the investment climate in textile parks,” said an industry expert.

By creating more incubation centres, the government has encouraged domestic textile manufacturing which has lost market share to Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Higher infra spend will help create the logistics required for the Rs 6,006 crore package for apparels announced last year.