MITRA to make textile industry globally competitive: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

To make India's textile industry globally competitive, the government on Monday proposed a scheme for setting up mega textile parks in the country, a move that is expected to boost employment generation through the creation of world-class infrastructure.

Under the scheme called Mega Investment Textiles Parks (MITRA), which is expected to attract large investments, seven mega textile parks will be established over three years. This will be launched in addition to the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech.

On the PLI scheme, Sitharaman said that the government has committed nearly Rs 1.97 lakh crore in the next five years starting 2021-22 to help bring scale and size in key sectors, create and nurture global champions and provide jobs to youth.

Announcing the scheme, the finance minister said that this will create world-class infrastructure with plug and play facilities to enable the creation of global champions in exports.

The mega textile parks will have integrated facilities and quick turnaround time for minimising transportation losses.

Welcoming the announcement, Textiles Minister Smriti Irani in a tweet said MITRA will be a "game-changer" for the Indian Textiles Industry.

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"Emphasis on state-of-the-art infrastructure through MITRA will give our domestic manufacturers a level-playing field in the international textiles market and pave the way for India to become a global champion of textiles exports across all segments," Smriti tweeted.

In her Budget speech, Sitharaman emphasised upon the need to rationalise duties on raw material inputs to manmade textiles reasoning that the sector generates employment and contributes significantly to the economy.

She said that the government is now bringing nylon chains on par with polyester and other man-made fibres. "We are uniformly reducing the BCD (basic customs duty) rates on caprolactam, nylon chips and nylon fibre and yarn to 5%. This will help the textile industry, MSMEs, and exports, too. "

"To benefit farmers, the customs duty on cotton is being raised from nil to 10% and on raw silk and silk yarn from 10% to 15%," she said.