Udupi Zilla Panchayat seeks Rs 21 lakh to set up modern printing unit

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the two-day silver jubilee celebrations of Udupi Taluk Press Owners’ Association here, he said that the unemployed youths from rural areas in the district are now entering the printing sector by coming in sufficient number to avail the regular training programme being arranged at RUDSETI. The association should take initiative in providing the required information to the Institute on the industrial needs of the printing sector in the district, he said.

He said that most of the government’s printing orders, other than in the government press were given to local private units. However, there was no readiness among the printers to take up government order due to lack of having modern printing technology. The local printing units mainly small and medium units in the district needed to be upgraded to meet the requirements, he added.

Karnataka State Printers’ Association (KSPA) President Ashok Kumar said that Karnataka, particularly Udupi district had now been in the forefront in modern printing technology. Any new innovation in the printing technology was immediately absorbed by the Manipal Press Limited here and added that the Association which had regularly providing free training in basic printing knowledge had so for provided training to 240 youths in eight batches. With the view to help the printers in the State, it had also brought out the names and addresses of the successful trained candidates in its magazine ‘Mudraka,’ he said.

KASIA President C R Janardhan said that there are one crore people serving in the printing sector in India including the newspaper industry, commercial printing units and others. There are as many as 1.30 lakh printers in the country of which 12,000 are in Karnataka, most of them are being in the small scale sector. The association should take up the responsibility to expose these tiny printing units in the small scale sector to modern printing technology, he said.

District Industries Centre Joint Director S G Hegde called upon the tiny printing units in the district to come forward to avail various benefits under the government new industrial policy. He said that under the new policy, that came into effect from this year, the tiny units were exempted from entry tax for new printing units for three years, 75 per cent stamp duty exemption and five per cent interest subsidy for regular installment payers, he said.

He said that with the introduction of Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme in place of PMRY (Prime Minister Rojgar Yojana), the entrepreneurs now will be able to get loan up to Rs 25 lakh with 35 per cent subsidy for special category, while it was 25 per cent subsidy with 5 lakh maximum loan for general category. Under this scheme, the district had last year disbursed Rs 2.25 crore as subsidy, he added.

The celebration was earlier inaugurated by Paryaya Putthige math seer Sri Sugunendratheertha Sripada who himself is a printer. Udupi CMC President Dinaker Shetty, Udupi Taluk Press Owners Association Founder Secretary U Mohan Upadhya and others were present.