Interest on loan to weavers may go down to seven pc

New Delhi, May 9 (UNI) A proposal for reducing interest rate on loan to weavers and waiving off their debt may soon be sumbitted to the Cabinet.

The government was considering reduction in the interest rate to seven per cent, as enjoyed by farmers, and was studying all the pros and cons of the proposal in detail before submitting it to the Cabinet, Union Minister for Textiles Shankar Singh Vaghela told the Rajya Sabha today while replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour.

In the course of his reply, he denied some Members' charge that weavers were committing suicide and schemes for their welfare were not working.

Pointing out that handloom production had increased in recent years, he said it was a proof that weavers were benefitting from these schemes.

When Member Ali Anwar said he was not satisfied with the Minister's answer as he had not given the figures of the amount spent by the state governments, the Minister said the state government had not sent any information to the Centre in this regard.

The Minister's reply prompted Chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to remark that it was the Central Government's monitoring duty to secure the figures from the state governments.

Replying to another supplementary regarding Maharashtra weavers, the Minister said there was proposal to shift the Finlay Textile Mill to the Vidarbha region to provide jobs to unemployed weavers.

He said the handloom sector was facing tough competition from the powerloom and it was because of that a handloom logo had been introduced to distinguish between the two kinds of fabric.

As many as 21 lakh aplications for using handloom logo had been received so far since its introduction, which indicated the weavers' interest in the sector had increased instead of having decreased, as claimed by some Members, said the Minister.

UNI