South India Spinners Association (SISPA) today expressed disappointment over not including SME spinning sector in the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS), recently announced by the Centre.
The SME spinning sector was totally neglected and they were not able to avail the benefit as a whole, SISPA president C Varadharajan said in a statement here.
Though welcoming the scheme, which has come as a great relief to the industry especially when th exports were decline in textile, apparel, garment sector and technical textiles, he appealed the Government to reconsider the ATUFS and include the SME Spinning Sector in the scheme.
Though the textile ministry had launched TUFS in April 1999, the spinning mills in the SME Sector falling in standalone spinning category, were not eligible to avail TUF benefits because of the stipulated Minimum Economic Size (MES) restriction.
It was only after 10 years that the MES norm was removed in January 2009, from when small scale Spinning Mills were eligible to avail the TUF benefits.
Added to the delay, the benefit in terms of interest reimbursement for spinning sector has been reduced from 5 per cent to 2 per cent thereby resulting in very low benefits in the TUFS, he said.
The high capital investment was a big burden for the spinning mills in the SME category, yet at the same time they cannot afford to ignore modernization, he said.
To help the SME Sector, SISPA has been requesting the Centre to render justice by giving a onetime capital subsidy of 15 per cent for all the machinery, individually or as a project for the existing spinning mills, Varadharajan said.
