By IANS,
New Delhi : Faced with shrinking global and domestic demand and a crippling cash crunch, an Indian textile industry lobby has urged the government to release Rs.20 billion that is pending under the technology modernization fund besides providing other support to tide over the present crisis.
The chairman of the industry lobby, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), R.K. Dalmiya, said in a statement here Wednesday that the textile industry is in deep trouble with capacity utilisation dropping to as low as 75 percent leading to loss of jobs.
He said that to tide over the liquidity crunch, CITI has requested the government to release Rs.20 billion which is pending from the government under the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS).
V.K. Ladiya, chairman of CITI’s sub-committee on investments, said that the financial crisis had resulted in negative growth of about 30-35 percent in volume terms, and also resulted in 500,000 to 700,000 workers losing their jobs.
He said that mills in states like Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu had already reduced shifts and cut down capacity.
Dalmiya also added that in the export market, India was losing out to countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia because of the low cost of production in those countries and their industry-friendly policies.
The industry is also facing power shortage in many states with Tamil Nadu being the worst affected.
“We already have a 40 percent power cut which has been announced officially and can’t operate at peak capacity during the rest of the day,” CITI’s vice chairman S.V. Arumugam said.
“This has hit efficiency and we run at 50 percent capacity during most days. Tamil Nadu is home to 40 percent of the textile industry in India and power shortage, especially, doesn’t help during such hard times,” he said.