New Delhi, Jan 30 (KNN) The Ministry of Textiles on Saturday extended the time period by 60 days for international manufacturers of Viscose Staple Fibre (VSF) to get quality certificate from Bureau of Indian Standards.

To check the import of low-quality VSF, the Ministry of Textiles had notified the VSF QCO 2022 on December 29, 2022 and it was to be implemented from January 29, 2023.

However, looking at the import dependency of India on the VSF, specially for some nominated categories, the textile associations had urged the government to extend the deadline for the applicability of the notification. 

The government has accepted the request and advised the BIS to complete the registration process of the important VSF suppliers at the earliest. This would ensure that Indian manufacturers met their committed schedules, said 

T. Rajkumar, chairman of Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), in a press release.

The Southern India Mills’ Association chairman, Ravi Sam, said in a statement that it normally took three to six months for the BIS to process the application, make inspections to the country concerned, and issue the BIS certification.

The 30 days’ time limit had caused difficulties for all the users of imported VSF. India was importing Viscose Rayon Staple Fibre from over 20 countries including Indonesia, Austria, Hongkong, Singapore, China, Thailand, UK, Sri Lanka, Greece and Germany. 

As per reports, between April 2021 and March 2022, India imported 60.76 million and 77.07 million kgs from April to November last year. 

Several hundreds of VSF textiles and clothing manufacturers in the country depended heavily on imports for some varieties of VDF fibres for nominated business, though they predominantly used indigenous VSF fibre.   (KNN Bureau)