Govt agrees to 21 new textile parks

The government has approved building of 21 new textile parks under the scheme for Integrated

Textiles Parks involving an estimated cost of Rs 2,100 crores. It will be implemented over a period of 36 months. Minister for Commerce, Industry and Textiles, Anand Sharma as Chairman of the Project Approval Committee under the scheme gave green signal to the recommendations of the Inter Ministerial Project Scrutiny Committee which examined 55 proposals for new textiles parks in the country.

The government has enhanced the allocation under TUFS from Rs 8,000 crores to Rs 15,404 crores under the 11th Five Year Plan and under the SITP an allocation of Rs 400 crores has been made for sanction of new textiles parks in April 2011. Sharma added that the new textiles parks would leverage an investment of over Rs 9,000 crores and provide employment to 4 lakh textiles workers. The government would finance common infrastructure with a subsidy up to Rs 40 crores per textile park.

After the government received a huge response to the road-shows held at Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Mumbai for building textile parks under the scheme for Integrated Textiles Parks, proposals were scrutinized by an inter-ministerial Project Scrutiny Committee on the basis of project cost, land size, net worth of investors, employment generation and value chain to be developed by the industry.

The government also sought to ensure balanced regional development, promote the textiles industry in Northeastern states and in states where the industry is in a nascent stage of development and promote textile parks in cooperative and handloom sectors. Six new textile parks have been sanctioned in Maharashtra, four in Rajasthan, two each in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and one each in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir and West Bengal.