The Hindu : Business : Centre's assurance to cotton growers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2004

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Centre's assurance to cotton growers

By Our Special Correspondent

AHMEDABAD, NOV. 16. The Union Textile Minister, Shankarsinh Waghela, today assured cotton growers that the Centre would not allow cotton prices to fall below the minimum support price.

Talking to media persons here, Mr. Waghela said the Cotton Corporation of India had already started making open market purchases to prevent cotton prices from declining and if necessary the CCI would also bid in the auctions to ensure that the prices did not fall below the support base.

Claiming that the Indian products had better credibility in the international markets than the Chinese goods, Mr. Waghela saw a bright future for the Indian textile products once the quota system was abolished by the end of next year. He said textile exports was expected to go up from about Rs. 27,000 crores at present to about Rs. 80,000 crores by the end of 2007.

About the Rs. 25,000 crore Technology Upgradation Fund for the textile mills announced by his predecessor, Kashiram Rana, Mr. Waghela said only about Rs. 7,000 crores was spent by the NDA Government and his ministry was now re-designing the investment procedures for utilising the balance Rs. 18,000 crores to improve the functioning of the existing textile mills.

He said the Government had no plans to reopen the sick mills of the National Textile Corporation and the employees would be offered attractive voluntary retirement schemes before these units were closed down.

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