The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Call for simpler procedures to import looms

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 10, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Call for simpler procedures to import looms

Special Correspondent

`The benchmark price of used shuttleless powerlooms should be raised'

CHENNAI: The Government of India should increase the benchmark price of second hand shuttleless powerlooms and make the import procedures simpler to facilitate import of more looms to increase cloth production, said State Textile Secretary A. Elangovan here on Thursday.

Inaugurating a seminar on "Textile Industry - Vision 2010 — strategies and preparedness," organised jointly by the Textile Committee, Chennai, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, and Apparels and Handloom Exporters' Association, he said that there were many impediments in importing used shuttleless looms.

He wanted the Centre to increase the benchmark price to help more loom owners to purchase better looms, besides relaxing import rules.

He cited the example of Pakistan and Bangladesh, which were way ahead of India as they allowed liberal import of shuttle-less looms.

The present level of powerloom cloth production in the State was estimated at 6,467 million square metres and it should be increased to 10,813 sq.m. over a period of five years to meet the additional cloth requirement.

This was possible only if 50,000 shuttleless looms were installed in the State in a phased manner.

Already, with State's initiatives, hi-tech shuttleless weaving parks were being established at a total of Rs 324 crore at Andipatti, Palladam and Komarapalayam.

To give a fillip to the apparel sector, two parks of international standards were established in Tirupur and Chennai. To meet further demand, steps were being taken to promote one more park on the outskirts of Tirupur.

However, the weakest link in the textile chain was the lack of processing units.

To meet the increasing demand, the Government had taken initiatives to set up a processing park at Cuddalore.

Textile Committee Additional Director Harsharan Das in his key note address said the government wanted a larger number of modernised work sheds to improve cloth production to make it globally competitive.

Already the Government was giving subsidy to loom owners to set up state-of-the-art work sheds.

He would recommend increase in the subsidy to help more people to set up modern work sheds. Referring to the demand for increase in the benchmark price of imported used shuttleless looms, he said he would take up the issue with the Government.

Earlier Chella K. Srinivasan, regional president of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, in his welcome address said the textile industry had an ambitious export target of $40 billion by 2010 from the present level of $13 billion. After the quota removal, opportunities had improved substantially.

But it was not easy to improve the export share in the international market unless quality goods were produced at a competitive price.

He said the workshop would explore these issues and other related matters to provide a platform for textile entrepreneurs to make a blueprint of strategies and preparedness for their exponential growth.

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