S Senthilkumar, President, ITAMMA in his welcome speech mentioned that Government of India has recently proposed a drive in favour of indigenous manufacturing and taking several policy decisions to make its ´Make in India´ campaign successful; where changes have been made in import and export duty structures as well as excise and other areas which will help the textile engineering industry to make the business at ease. As per the Union Budget 2015-16, the Government has offered benefits of capital goods manufacturing in India with investment allowance at 15 per cent to a manufacturing company with investments more than Rs 25 crore in new plant and machinery.
Apart from the above, each state in India offers additional incentives in land cost, relaxation in stamp duty, exemption on sale/lease of land, power tariff incentives, concessional rate of interest on loan, etc. for industrial projects. Accordingly, it is expected that the current domestic textile and apparel market to grow at 12 per cent CAGR from present $68 billion to $154 billion by 2020. There are about 1,400 units of textile engineering industry in India with a total investment of Rs 7,800 crore and more than 80 per cent being SMEs. About 50 per cent of these units are in an around Coimbatore.
ITAMMA has taken various initiatives under the cluster development activities to help its members in the product developments and innovations through programmes like 5S, Lean, Design Awareness and Common Facility Centre (CFC). Accordingly, a seminar was organised in the same area to update its members to know the various schemes of Government bodies like SIDCO, MSME and FIEO; available for the product developments and especially for the small entrepreneurs and thus supporting the Government Mission of ´Make in India´.
During the seminar presentations were made by the following: Vijay Baskar, DGM, NSIC, Coimbatore; V Saravanabava, Branch Manager, Tamil Nadu Small Industries Development Corporation Ltd (SIDCO); Ninad Panhale, Product Manager ´ Textile, Sales, Electronica Finance Ltd, Santhi, Director, FIEO, Coimbatore; Palanivel, Deputy Director, MSME, Coimbatore on the schemes for Textile Engineering Industry During the seminar ITAMMA also signed MoUs with Apparel and Leather Technology College (ALT), Bangalore, for jointly working together on various aspects for the benefit of the Textile Engineering Industry as well as the Garment Industry as whole and with Kumaraguru College of Technology (KCT), Coimbatore, to set up a Common Facility Centre for Textile Engineering Industry in their campus. The common facility centre will be developed under the cluster development programme of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) as well as Department of Heavy Industries which will have the Testing Laboratory, Design Corner, Knowledge Centre for special finishes and processes as well as training centre. The facility will be benefited to more than 70 units of textile accessories and machinery manufacturing industry in and around Coimbatore.
The MoUs were signed by Senthilkumar, President, on behalf of ITAMMA while A Mohan, Manager, CPC, on behalf of ALT, Bangalore; and Shankar Vanavarayar, Joint Correspondent, on behalf of KCT, Coimbatore, signed the MoUs.