Government approves 61 applications under PLI scheme for textiles

"We expect the actual turnover will be more as these applicants will be manufacturing non-notified products as well, but PLI benefits will not be extended for those," Singh said.

He said the PLI scheme was on manmade fibres and technical textiles. "India is the largest producer of cotton. Our aim to reach $100 billion export target for textiles," he said, adding that manmade fibre and technical textiles are the two major contributors because of India's advantage and global demand. The window of application was open for 2 months.

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The Textiles Secretary added that a fairly good number of states have been covered in the scheme. "Out of the 61 approved applicants, 8 are from Uttar Pradesh, 7 are from Andhra Pradesh and 15 are from Gujarat," he said.

He added that in terms of investment, there are 13 companies, which included Trident Ltd, Shahi exports Pvt Ltd. The highest investment is by Goa Glass Fibre which will invest Rs1654cr. Trident will invest 1609 crore and MCPI will put in Rs1383 crore.

The government will conduct quarterly monitoring of investment and turnover committed by the companies under their applications, he said.

Talking about high import duty of cotton, he said it was not giving importers an advantage. "So, we decided to reduce the duty, after consultations with the Department of Revenue and Agriculture," he said.

Import duty removal will have a salutary impact on cooling off the high cotton prices, he added. "Earlier, the import duty included 5 percent BCD and 5 percent AIDC and 0.5 percent of agri cess was applicable on cotton," he said.

He also said they have received proposals from 13 states to develop 17 dedicated textile parks.

He said the outlay for PLI was of Rs 10,683 crore outlay was there for PLI, but the incentive outgo is of Rs 6,600 crore. "With the remaining budget, we intend to float PLI 2.0. We plan to use this money for apparel industry in the future," he said adding that there are seven companies that have global partners.

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