By IANS
Ahmedabad : The Union Textile Minister Shankersinh Vaghela has asked the textile industry to focus on many growth opportunities that are available instead of getting bogged down by erosion in export earnings due to appreciation of the rupee.`
Speaking at the two-day seminar Texcellence 2007 Saturday, sponsored by Reliance Industries, Vaghela said that the textiles ministry proposed to implement suggestions made by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently and the industry could forge ahead and bolster its earnings from both the domestic as well as export markets.
He said the government had already tried to help exporters by granting fiscal relief and extension duty entitlement passbook scheme. The re-designed technology up gradation fund scheme (TUFS) scheme is also on the anvil. “The prime minister and all of us are concerned with issues affecting the industry and we are trying to resolve them”, said Vaghela.
Outlining the features of new initiatives the textile ministry is contemplating, Textile Commissioner J.N. Singh said the foremost among them was the setting of a Textile Territorial Investment and Production Complex (TTIPC).
This will help mega textile clusters to fulfil many missing infrastructure links and become more competitive.
On market development, Singh said that the government might restructure the about a dozen export promotion councils into one “umbrella organisation”.
“Our goal is to promote textiles as one India brand, instead of each organisation trying to focus on its own product range,” he told IANS.
“We must realize that the days when we could merely be commodity players are gone. There will be tough competition from China in the commodity game including textiles. To beat the competition we have to give value-added products,” Singh said.
R J Shah, chief principal industrial advisor to Gujarat government said the state was focusing on manufacture of technical textiles for which there is enormous demand both in domestic and overseas market.
So far the government has approved 30 textile parks with Gujarat on the top of the list with seven parks.