In a press release, Mr. M. Senthilkumar, Chairman, Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA), has thanked the Prime Minister for his approval of the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS).
He has stated that ATUFS would enable the textile industry to ease its financial position and also plan investments. The Office of the Textile Commissioner (TXC) can now closely associate itself with entrepreneurs, bankers and the State Governments and implement the projects immediately.
Mr. Senthilkumar has welcomed the announcement of capital subsidy in lieu of the existing combination of interest subsidy. The textile units making investments would now be in a position to get assistance without any problem. Several hundreds of units were affected under the earlier schemes due to lack of transparency and the mistakes committed by bankers.
According to him, the i-TUFS software launched in April 2015 would make the scheme transparent and enable investors to track the status of their application and avoid mistakes and delays. The A-TUFS and i-TUFS would enable all the stakeholders to implement the scheme without hassles and the subsidy would reach the beneficiaries on time.
The SIMA chief has further said that the scheme is silent on the long-pending TUF subsidies of blackout period and left out cases. He has appealed to the Centre to reconsider all left-out cases since investments have also been made. Without due support, investments worth over Rs. 65,000 crores are likely to become NPAs.
Mr. Senthilkumar has reiterated that TUFS has enabled the textile industry to function without reporting any NPA during the last 15 years and also enabled the sector to remain healthy.
Hailing the Union Government move, Mr. Naishadh Parikh, Chairman, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), said: “I appreciate the Cabinet decision approving budget for the committed liabilities for investments already made by the textile industry, which has been suspended and pending for almost 9 months”.
The decision to make budgetary allocation for the committed liability of the earlier schemes comes as a great relief to the industry which is passing through a tough time. It will definitely strengthen the manufacturing sector in the country.
CITI also appreciates the joint efforts made by the Textiles and Finance Ministries for launching a new scheme. This could trigger the growth of textile manufacturing in India.