While welcoming the provision of around Rs. 2,980 crore for TUFS in the Union Budget, Mr Ashish Bagrodia, President of Northern India Textile Mills Association (NITMA) said, “Government must resume fresh sanctions under the scheme as these have been suspended for a long time”.
He was also praise for the initiative to reduce customs duty from 7.5% to 5% on certain textile inputs and intermediates, which will be of some help to technical textiles industry.
Shri Bagrodia further added, “In the budget, the optional excise duty regime has been converted into mandatory route at a unified rate of 10 per cent for branded garments or made-ups. This is aimed at bringing the branded readymade garments under the excise net which was earlier voluntary for branded apparel.
“This step will further lead to inflationary pressures since most of the inputs in the garment sector are without cenvat. Implementation of this will also be quite difficult since there are many small units manufacturing branded garments.
“Further, an excise duty of 5% has been imposed on automatic looms and projectile looms which will increase the price of such indigenous machines and affect mainly the powerloom sector”.
He however, thanked the Government for reduction in basic custom duty from 5% to 2.5% on certain textile intermediates and in basic customs duty on raw silk (not thrown) from 30 to 5%.