Textiles Minister exhorts industry to focus on high value added products; move up value chain

New Delhi, Nov 2 (KNN) The textile sector has immense potential to accelerate job creation and drive both growth and exports, said Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, Piyush Goyal on Tuesday.

While interacting with the beneficiaries of the Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) for textiles at a review meeting in New Delhi, Goyal asked stakeholders of the textile industry to strive to move up the value chain and focus on products of high value.

He asked the beneficiaries to focus on improving the quality of textile products made in India to make them world-class. “The USP of Indian textile industry must not be restricted to cheap labour,” he said.

The textile minister urged all the stakeholders to pay the workers fairly and provide them with social security.

The Minister said that the centre was looking at PLI 2.0 and instructed officials of the Ministry to undertake extensive and exhaustive stakeholder consultations before finalizing the contours of PLI 2.0. Goyal emphasised that PLI 2.0 would empower the sector to compete globally with top exporting countries like China, Vietnam.

The review meeting was attended by representative of 49 companies and key dignitaries of Ministry of Textiles. Under the PLI Textile Part 1, 67 applicants had applied out of which 64 were selected and out of these 64 companies, 55 companies have formed participant companies. The proposed investment during the entire tenure of the scheme is INR 19,789 Cr out of which INR 1,536 Cr has been invested so far.

The review meeting was held to understand the implementation status of the projects under the Scheme and for resolving their issues.  (KNN Bureau)