Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani on Thursday said her ministry is looking at reducing the hank yarn obligation.
Irani said the government has already partially eased the challenges related to hank yarn obligation, which the industry has been facing from the last two decades.
"We are actively pursuing reducing hank yarn obligation even more," Irani said at an event organised by The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (Texprocil).
The hank yarn obligation is a mechanism to ensure adequate availability of hank yarn to handloom weavers at reasonable prices.
The existing norms prescribe that every producer of yarn who packs yarn for civil consumption shall pack at least 30 per cent of yarn in hank form on quarterly basis.
In the textile industry, a hank is a coiled or wrapped unit of yarn or twine (as opposed to both other objects like thread or rope as well as other forms such as in a ball, cone, bobbin, spool, among others).
The industry is demanding that the obligation should be reduced in the 10-20 per cent range.
She said one of the issues faced by the industry is procurement of cotton by Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) and its sale to the industry at a competitive prices.
"The ministry and the industry are jointly making efforts to ensure a speedy resolution to this challenge," she said.
Irani said the textile ministry is actively pursuing with the finance ministry on the inverted duty structure. In the textile industry, there is high duty on raw material compared to the finished product.
The union minister also urged Texprocil to hand-hold small firms to become mid-sized companies.
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