The heads of Confederation of Indian Textile Industry, Cotton Textile Export Promotion Council and Southern India Mills Association held a joint press meet on 24.9.2019 to talk about the various issues in Textile Industry and required policy interventions.
While appealing for the status quo on Energy Policies in Tamil Nadu, it was said that there are more than 1500 MSME Textile mills operating in TN and they are sourcing open access power either under group captive or through their own wind mills. The tri bodies appealed to kindly continue to extend the open access facility for industrial units of less than 1 MW.
The TN electricity regulation commission provides banking facility for erecting windmills upto March 2020 and TANGEDCO as per the commission’s order is charging 14% of the wind energy as banking charges. The tex-bodies have asked to continue the banking facility given.
They added that erecting new- wind mills will involve huge capital which the industry finds unable to do so at the present. It also placed on request to remove the 1% agricultural Market committee fee levied on cotton waste in the interest of the spinning, handloom and powerloom sectors as it mentioned that there is no logic in levying that fee on the by-product of cotton i.e., cotton waste.
The tri tex-bodies stated that their industry is currently facing severe liquidity crisis mainly due to huge accumulation of govt dues. It requested to release those dues on war footing to enable the industry to ease its liquidity crunch.
They made pleas to extend the MSMEs Debt Restructuring Package for the entire textile industry as it could save many companies from turning into NPAs.
Keeping in mind of the coming season, the bodies said that it is essential to come out with a cotton policy that enables CCI to see its Minimum Support Price procured cotton on a regular basis at 5 cents lower than the International Price during the peak season to avoid accumulation of stocks with exception to the actual users and also make cotton available at international price during off-season.
They have also asked for provision of adequate funding by the Govt at NABARD Finance rate or under priority lending rate to reduce the carrying cost and minimize the losses incurred by the CCI to create a win-win strategy for all the stakeholders.
It was advocated that including fabrics fabrics under RoSL benefit is essential to encourage fabric nomination business of global brands and boost powerloom/handloom fabric exports, including cotton yarn in RoTDEP export benefit scheme to benefit millions of cotton farmers and enable the spinning sector to constantly modernize and meet the growing demands of the downstream sectors and sustain its growth.