The government will soon announce a special package for the knitwear industry, Textiles Minister Smriti Irani said on May 22. Incidentally, the employment-intensive and export-oriented knitwear industry is among the sectors hurt by demonetisation and rupee appreciation.

Irani had recently visited the knitwear hub Tirupur in Tamil Nadu and was keen to ensure setting up of similar knitwear clusters in other parts of the country as well. In a bid to encourage entrepreneurship in the sector, she sought promote across the country the catchphrase “yesterday’s labour in Tirupur is today’s owner”.

Addressing other issues including job-creation and investment flows in the textiles sector, the Minister said in order to get an accurate picture about employment generation and investment activity in the sector, the government had in a recent notification designated Textile Commissioner as the Statistics Officer for collecting statistics from the manufacturers and traders of textile items.

The purpose for Textile Commissioner collecting statistics relating to installed capacity, working of the units, employment, consumption of the raw material, production, deliveries and month-end stock of the textile item is to monitor the functioning of the textile sector and to maintain data base for making use in policy decisions. The collection of statistics related to the textile sector is applicable to the whole of India except Jammu and Kashmir, the notification had said.

Irani also said in a bid to attract greater investments and technological tie-ups across various segments in the textiles value chain, the government will be organising a mega exhibition ‘Textiles India 2017’ and an international conference from June 30-July 2 in Gujarat. The event will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and over 2500 international buyers from over 20 countries and more than 15,000 domestic buyers are expected to take part in it. The event will also witness signing of MoUs with countries, states, associations and institutions, as well as meetings between businesses and governments.

On a Textiles Ministry-commissioned report finding that the Scheme for Integrated Textile Parks (SITP) had not achieved its goals due to factors including small size of the parks and inadequate marketing support from the government as well as violation of norms by special purpose vehicles of the parks, Irani said the government is looking into the issue and that the scheme is being reviewed. She said the government will take stringent action against those found guilty to ensure that there are no transgressions in the future.

On addressing the problems faced by the jute industry, she said the government had imposed anti-dumping duty to prevent dumping of the item and to protect the domestic sector. The Minister added that many of the closed factories were reopened and those who lost their jobs were re-employed.

Source: The Hindu