The Hindu : Karnataka News : White Paper sought on sericulture project

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 04, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

White Paper sought on sericulture project

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, FEB. 3. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member, Vishveshwar Hegde Kageri, today charged the Government with committing irregularities in the implementation of the World Bank-aided project on sericulture development and sought a White Paper on the project.

Replying to the question, the Minister for Sericulture, C. Channigappa, said that a Central team inspected the project areas and gave a clean chit. He said that in the first phase the World Bank released Rs. 101.13 crores and in the second Rs. 142.84 crores.

Hassan-Mangalore line

The Minister for Industries, P.G.R. Sindhia, told J. Krishna Palemar (BJP) that Rs. 17 crores will be released soon to complete 55 km of railway line work between Hassan and Mangalore.

He assured the member that the project will be completed by September-October.

Small-scale units

To a question from Yogish Bhat (BJP), the Minister agreed that the small-scale industries are facing problems because owing to globalisation, competition from multinational corporations, inadequate power, inadequate working capital, etc., and the Government has enacted the Karnataka Industries Facilitation Act, 2002 as a deregulatory measure. The Government has released Rs. 77.59 crores as subsidy to 6,562 units and come up with an action plan for intensive industrial development of most and more backward taluks over five years with an allocation of Rs. 769 crores.

He said that according to preliminary reports of the third all-India SSI Census 2001-02, 37.65 per cent of the industries have closed down.

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