Why powerloom needs a big push, and lots of attention too

Cloth production figures currently are at 43 billion metres with powerloom contributing 29 billion metres. Conservative estimates suggest that to achieve the 90 billion metres target, productivity has to go up to 55 billion metres, a jump of nearly 50%.

Lack of modernisation is the biggest challenge. The country today has only 31,629 shuttleless looms—that’s only 1.62% of the overall looms numbering 19.55 lakh. China, on the other hand, has around 1.7 lakh shuttleless looms. The ministry has set a target of 90,000 shuttleless looms by 2010, which it says will be sufficient for the sector to achieve the desired production levels. But even then modernisation level will be under 5%, a far cry from competitors like China and even Pakistan.

The extent to which the ministry has undermined the importance of the sector is evident from the fact that there are only three dedicated and two other schemes for strengthening the sector. On the contrary, there are 12 schemes for handloom with three introduced in the last fiscal itself and another on the lines of the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) in the offing.

‘‘A change in mindset is required and the existing schemes benefit only peripherally. As of now there is no single scheme that is truly dedicated to the sector,’’ conceded a senior textile ministry official. Achieving the ministry target will require an investment of around Rs 22,000 crore (fully automatic) or Rs 15,000 crore (semi automatic) by 2010. But the sector has so far attracted insignificant investment under TUFS.

‘‘Allocation under TUFS has been low because of the collaterals that have to be provided for getting a loan. Most of the weavers do not have a bank account and neither a balance sheet. The lending agencies however insist on a proof of the profitability of a loom while sanctioning a loan,’’ said Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) Secretary General D K Nair. The ministry has recently stepped in to simplify procedures by reducing collaterals but the impact of this is not visible yet.

Further, the amount sanctioned to the sector under the scheme has declined by 32.62% and disbursement went down by 15.93% in April-December 2005.

Lack of machinery manufacturers has also hit the sector hard. ‘‘The country today depends on import of machinery from China and Taiwan. The cost for an imported automatic shuttleless loom is about Rs 26 lakh and most in the industry cannot afford to buy them on their own,’’ said Nair. And, the ministry’s thrust on enabling joint ventures with foreign manufacturers has not yielded results.