3 min readChennaiMay 17, 2022 04:30 PM IST
First published on: May 17, 2022 at 04:30 PM IST
Textile units in Tiruppur, Karur and Erode have downed their shutters since Monday to draw the attention of the Union government to high cotton and yarn prices.
Thousands of units involved in export, import, production and manufacturing of textile products, announced that they will halt their work on May 16 and May 17 as part of the strike.
Industry sources said there are 20,000 textile manufacturing and allied job working units providing direct and indirect employment to 10 lakh workers in Tiruppur alone.
CPI(M) workers staged a hunger strike in support of the industry demands, in front of the Tiruppur Corporation Tuesday.
Speaking to Indianexpress.com, M Raja Shanmugam, the president of Tiruppur Exporters’ Association (TEA), said one could buy one kg of yarn for Rs 200 around 18 months ago, whereas the same amount will now fetch only 400 gm of yarn.
“This apparently reveals how much knitwear-exporting MSMEs are undergoing financial stress on the operational front… so much so that they are only working at 40 per cent of their capacity,” he said.
The TEA has placed a couple of demands before the Centre, including a temporary ban on export of yarn and cotton.
The body has also urged the government to remove cotton from the commodity trading list and bring it under the Essential Commodities Act.
“Month-on-month increase of these materials could not be accommodated easily by any of these companies. Everyone started bleeding. This has brought us down to a precarious situation. The Union government’s intervention could only resolve this crisis. They need to take measures on war-footing. We are meeting the minister of textiles today in Delhi over this issue,” Shanmugam added.
Notably, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagging the disruptions faced by the textile industry in the southern state and urged him to initiate measures to rein in the price rise.
Stalin said that as an immediate measure, stock declaration for cotton and yarn be made mandatory for all spinning mills so that ginners and cotton traders can obtain actual data on cotton and yarn availability.
“The Union government has waived import duty on cotton till September 30, 2022. However, as it takes more than three months for a consignment to reach Indian ports after a contract is entered into, effectively import duty waiver will be available only up to June 30, 2022. Therefore, the Union government may issue suitable clarifications that waiver of import duty will be available for all contracts entered up to 30th September,” he said.
Stalin added that the cash credit limit of the spinning mills to purchase cotton could be extended up to eight months in a year and similarly, margin money sought by the banks at 25 per cent of purchase value may be reduced to 10 per cent since banks are calculating the purchase stock value at lesser rates than the actual purchase/market rates.
Thousands of units involved in export, import, production and manufacturing of textile products, announced that they will halt their work on May 16 and May 17 as part of the strike. (File/Representative Image) 
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