Date:11/01/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/01/11/stories/2005011101721700.htm

Back Nethaji Apparel Park inaugurated — Textile sector needs Rs 27,000-cr investments says Chidambaram

G. Gurumurthy

STITCH IN TIME: The Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, at a knitwear export unit in the Nethaji Apparel Park at Tirupur. Looking on are the Union Textile Minister, Mr Shanker Sinh Vaghela (extreme right), and the Chairman of the Apparel Export Promotion Council, Mr A. Sakthivel (third from right). — K. Ananthan

Tirupur , Jan. 10

THE Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, has visualised a capital investment requirement of Rs 27,000 crore for textile sector to enable it to take on the evolving market opportunities thrown open by the seamless global textile trade.

He said he would be too happy if this scale of capital needs was mobilised domestically. In the event of that not happening, the country needed to get foreign capital as the domestic textile sector requires these investments over the next two years so that it could counter the challenges from other South Asian textile economies such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Hong Kong.

Mr Chidambaram today participated at the inauguration of the country's first apparel park project, the Nethaji Apparel Park (NAP), promoted by the Tirupur-based knitwear industries at New Tirupur, some 14 km off the knitwear town.

Mr Chidambaram assured that his Ministry would welcome any proposal that goes to support raising new capital investment which, he said, is the basis for economic growth of the country.

Turning to the status of the investment proposals in pipeline for different sectors of economy, the Finance Minister said after recording a negative growth in the investment proposals consecutively during 2002-03, they showed positive signs last year and as of October 2004, the total proposed investment in all sectors stood at Rs 17,93, 974 crore.

Of this, the share of the manufacturing sector was Rs 4,25,000 crore and out of that the proposals for the textile sector were to the tune of Rs 9,930 crore. Within the textile sector, the break-up was Rs 3,580 crore for cotton textiles and Rs 2,796 crore in synthetic sector.

Mr Chidambaram said if India had to take advantage of the globalised textile market, it should access the benefits of foreign technology as well.

Mr Chidambaram who traced the knitwear export growth records achieved by Tirupur knitwear industry since it began on a modest Rs 75 crore shipment in 1985 said that even as the country set on the course of liberalisation in 1991, Tirupur exporters clinched an export earnings of Rs 700 crore and they went on to achieve the Rs 5,000-crore mark exports last year.

The Minister appreciated the initiative of the Tirupur knitwear entrepreneurs in a project like the apparel parks even in an era when many in the industry were yet to know which way the winds of fortune would blow in the quota free regime.

The Union Textile Minister, Mr Shanker Sinh Vaghela, who was present at the inaugural function, said that the NAP would be a symbol for the private-public partnership and would get the world-class textile production infrastructure.

The Textile Ministry had contributed Rs 17 crore for the setting up of the NAP's infrastructure facilities. Mr Vaghela used the opportunity to urge the Finance Minister to give more fiscal incentives for textile cluster-based captive power units which would go long way to bring down the cost of power.

Presiding over the function, the Chairman and Managing Director of NAP, Mr A. Sakthivel, who is also the President of the Tirupur Exporters Association, urged the Finance Minister to grant special package of fiscal and tax concessions to the `apparel exporters' by treating them on a separate footing on a par with those in the special economic zone, enhancement of duty drawback rates and WTO compatible market development assistance.