Vaghela confident of achieving targets set for 2012

New Delhi, Dec 19 (UNI) Textiles Minister Shankersinh Vaghela has released the 'Vision Statement for Textiles and Clothing Industry' for 2007-2012, revising the potential size of the industry.

The Vision Statement, updated by CRISIL for Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), revises the industry potential from 85 billion dollars by 2010 to 110 billion dollars by 2012, -- still lower than the government's ambitious target of 115 billion dollars by the terminal year of the Eleventh Plan.

Earlier, the 'Vision Statement' for the textile sector was formulated by the Indian Cotton Mills' Federation (ICMF), now rechristened as CITI, in August 2004 setting the targets and action plan for all the stakeholders in the industry for the period upto 2010.

Releasing the Vision Statement, Mr Vaghela said, ''In order to facilitate the industry to induct state-of-the-art technologies, the UPA government has strengthened and augmented the Technology Upgaradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) and the disbursements under this Schemes have increased fold.'' On the industry's demand for continuation of TUFS for another five years to make it co-terminus with the Eleventh Plan, Mr Vaghela said the current scheme will expire on March 31, 2007 and beyond that it is upto the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission to decide.

The minister further said that profound changes are taking place in the global trade in textiles and clothing. Elimination of quotas from January 2005, progressive liberalisation of market access by way of gradual reduction of import tariff and removal of quantitative restrictions (QRs) on imports has led to intense competition both in domestic and international markets.

The revised vision envisages an investment worth Rs 1,94,000 crore by 2012, he added.

The production output of the industry would need to be accelerated and almost doubled by 2012 from the current levels to achieve the projected targets.

He expressed satisfaction that in the 'Vision' industry has envisaged employment generation of the order of more than 14 million jobs. It will be possible only by enlarging the manufacturing base.

The minister said the government is making concerted efforts to improve the capacity, productivity and investment climate in the textile sector so that it becomes the backbone of its manufacturing sector. It is committed to create and enable conducive atmosphere for the Indian Textile Industry to modernise and expand capacities.

Various policies and procedures have been streamlined and made more industry and exporter friendly to enable them to compete more effectively in the global markets, he added.

For providing adequate infrastructure facilities to realise the future ambitions, two major schemes namely 'Apparel Park for Exports Scheme' - for imparting focused thrust on setting up of apparel manufacturing units of international standards at potential growth centres and 'Textile Centres Infrastructure Development Scheme (TCIDS)' - for modernising infrastructure facilities at major textile centres of the country were in operation.

With a view to bring urgency in implementation, both the schemes were subsumed into a new scheme namely 'Scheme for Integrated Textile Park' and there has been a huge response to the new scheme, Mr Vaghela said.

Since the inception of the scheme, 26 integrated parks have been sanctioned with a total project cost of Rs 2,430 crore involving investments of more than Rs 2,400 crore and additional employment generation of more than five lakh people.

The 'Vision Statement' made it clear that by 2011-12, many Free Trade Agreements (FTA's) are expected to be functional and domestic industry would need to have acquired competitiveness and scale by them to compete on an equal footing with imports.

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