Textile Mills Seek Stimulus Package, Duty-Cut on MMF.

The Southern India Mills' Association (SIMA) has urged the Government to devise a stimulus package aimed at revival of the textile units and to reduce duty imposition on man-made fibres (MMF).

After his election as the new Chairman of SIMA, Mr S. Dinakaran, Joint Managing Director of Sambandam Spinning Mills, said the industry has been grappling against a number of issues like soaring cost of raw inputs, power crunch, labour scarcity, uneven Government policies and rising interest rates.

He stated that in the past five months itself, the spinning industry in the country has suffered a loss of Rs. 150 billion.

In reference to the earlier requests made by SIMA to the PM, different ministries and the RBI, Mr. Dinakaran once again repeated the demand for allowing the mill owners a moratorium period of two years for repaying all loans and interests.

He said that even those mills which chose to streamline their business or benefited from such facilities during 2008-09 financial crisis should also be allowed such moratorium period, besides making eroded working capital into long term loans, cutting down on margin money, etc.

The new SIMA head called for the PM’s intervention in connection with a textile industry stimulus package to safeguard investments worth about Rs. 2000 billion made under the Textile Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) and thereby to protect jobs of most of the workers engaged in the industry. He also sought swift execution of the National Fibre Policy.

Talking about MMF, Mr. Dinakaran demanded a total rollback of five percent import duty and four percent special additional duty, and reduction in Central excise duty from present 10 percent to four percent, so as to raise the affordability of garments and to give the local manmade fibre mills a level playing field with countries like China.

He further demanded that the obligation with regard to hank yarn should be nullified and reeling parks should be set up in all leading handloom hubs to enable process of conversion of cone yarn into reeling yarn.

The SIMA Chief urged the Chief Ministers of the Southern States to slash the Value Added Tax (VAT) on cone yarn to two percent, pending implementation of General Sales Tax (GST). He also asked them to tackle the issue of southern load despatch centre corridor so as to help the industries to benefit from the open access system.

Source : fibre2fashion.com