Thaindian News

Mumbai, Aug 25 (IANS) The Technology Upgradation Funds Scheme (TUFS) that provides support for textiles through interest reimbursement and capital subsidy, will be extended during the 12th Plan period as well, said Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma here Thursday.

Inaugurating the 1st international exhibition and conference on technical textiles Technotex 2011 in Mumbai, Sharma said the textile sector remains core to the Indian economy and the government is committed to its all round development.

Jointly organised by Ministry of Textiles, Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), the Indian Technical Textiles Association and various other industry associations are supporting the event. Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka are the partner states.

“The emerging sector of technical textiles has been identified as one of the thrust areas of textiles development,” he said.

Technical textiles include textiles for automotive applications, medical textiles, geo-textiles, agro-textiles used for crop protection and protective clothing for fire fighters, bullet-proof jackets and space suits.

“Four more Centres of Excellence for non-woven textiles will be set up, in addition to the existing four, to give a boost to production of technical textiles. One of them relating to sports textiles will be based in Mumbai,” Sharma said.

These centers would be equipped with internationally accredited testing labs, training facilities for trainers and technicians from the industry, IT-enabled information centre and other requisite support to the technical textile entrepreneurs.

In order to promote technical textiles in the country and to address the growth bottlenecks the, Ministry of Textiles has launched the Technology Mission on Technical Textiles (TMTT).

Sharma said two new missions aimed at standardisation of testing laboratories and boosting marketing strength will be announced shortly.

The Ministry of Textiles, expects the technical textiles sector in India to grow by 11 percent every year to attain a market size of $14.8 billion by 2012-13 from the current size of $9.9 billion.

“With the growth projection remaining optimistic, I call upon the industry to invest in research, innovation and marketing efforts to put India on the world map, in the field of technical textiles,” Sharma said.

Also present at the occasion was Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan who called upon the centre to set up public sector venture capital fund to encourage entrepreneurs to explore new areas of technical textiles.

He said Maharashtra will soon launch a new textile policy aimed at boosting valued added production in the state.

Currently only 25 percent of cotton grown in Maharashtra is processed within the state, while the rest goes to other states.