25 textile parks get infrastructure grant

The textile ministry has cleared the proposals of infrastructure grant to 25 integrated textile parks including four such projects in Andhra Pradesh.

The ministry will provide 40 per cent of the infrastructure cost, subject to a maximum of Rs 40 crore, as grant to each integrated textile park.

These 25 parks would receive about Rs 700 crore as financial aid from the textile ministry though the exact amount of grant that each would get is still being worked out, according to Nayan C Parekh, chairman of the textile committee, which functions under the textile ministry.

Parekh said these 25 parks would be up and running in two years when the infrastructure is fully created. The ministry is providing grants to these private sector initiatives as the investment in infrastructure support required by these operations would be unviable in the short term.

"We could successfully turn around the textile industry into a sunrise sector last year which saw 25 per cent growth during this period," Parekh said, adding that the country had attracted about Rs 32,000 crore investment into the sector in a year. About 2 lakh new jobs were created in the textile sector, he said. Textile exports from India touched $17.5 billion last year compared with $13.5 billion during the previous year. The textile ministry aims to achieve $40 billion exports by 2010.

According to Parekh, the textile industry is expected to maintain the same level of growth rate in the coming years whereas the Chinese textile industry's growth continues to be at around 8 per cent in view of quantitative restrictions imposed by Europe and the US till 2008. "To utilise the opportunity, the Centre is also emphasising on foreign direct investment (FDI) in the textile sector," he said.

Andhra Pradesh being a late entrant into this labour-intensive industry is trying to catch up with states such Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Besides creating employment opportunities for semi-literate and non-literate rural women folk through the textile and garment industry, the Andhra Pradesh government wants to see that value-addition to the cotton being produced in the state is done within the state itself to ensure better prices to farmers.

With the increase in acreage under Bt cotton, the state is anticipating higher production of cotton in the state leading to a decrease in cotton prices.

Besides the Apparel City SEZ promoted by Brandix Lanka in 1,000 acres in Visakhapatnam, the other three parks in Andhra which received the approval for the infrastructure grant are Hyderabad Hytech Textile Park at Kottur in Mahaboobnagar district, Hindupur Vyapara Apparel Park Limited, Hindupur in Anantapur district, and Pochampally Handloom Park in Nalgonda.

State government officials said the government was also planning to encourage a couple of more projects. About four integrated textile units and a half-a-million spindle capacity new spinning mills were in the pipeline, they said.

Currently textile manufacturer, Skumars, is understood to have been negotiating with the state for land and other support to develop a textile park in a 250-acre area at Sitarampur in Ranga Reddy district, near Hyderabad.