Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget on Saturday announced a National Technical Textiles Mission, which is expected to give thrust to production of a wide variety of textiles used in sectors such as healthcare, infrastructure, automobiles, defence, and agriculture.
The ₹1,480-crore Mission, to be implemented from 2020-2021 to 2023-2024, aims at positioning India as a global leader in technical textiles.
Huge imports
“India imports significant quantity of technical textiles worth $16 billion every year. To reverse this trend and to position India as a global leader, a National Technical Textiles Mission is proposed,” she said.
According to K.S. Sundararaman, chairman of the Indian Technical Textiles Association, the size of the technical textile industry in the country is approximately ₹12,000 crore, excluding the hygiene industry. The last time the sector received focus was a few years ago to set up six centres of excellence across the country. With the need to create a domestic base for raw material production, push for manufacture of high end technical textile products, boost investments, and increase per capita consumption, there is a need for a Mission.
Nodal office
“We need to see how this Mission will be implemented. There should be an empowered nodal office that will coordinate all the efforts and make the Mission beneficial to the industry,” he said.
Another major announcement in the Budget, which is expected to give a thrust to the polyester fibre sector, is abolition of anti-dumping duty on PTA (Purified Terephthalic Acid). This is the raw material for production of polyester fibre.
T. Rajkumar, chairman of the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry, said this was one of the long-pending demands of the industry. “Abolition of anti-dumping duty will bring polyester price in India on a par with international price. Polyester will be the future engine of growth for the Indian textile industry.”
The Budget estimates for the textile and clothing sector for 2020-2021 is ₹3,514.79 crore against ₹4,831.48 crore for 2019-2020.
