Financial assistance schemes for knitwear sector announced

Chennai: In order to promote the knitwear industry, government has come up with a few initiatives that will provide financial assistance for service centres, yarn banks, solar energy production and market development.

Government will provide financial assistance of maximum Rs 2 crore for setting up new service centres that offer facilities including testing, trading, sample development, consultancy and trouble shooting. These centres will come up in knitwear clusters on PPP model with the participation of industry and industry bodies.

The ministry will also provide a financial assistance of up to Rs 20 lakh for the modernisation and upgradation of existing PSCs. The new initiatives are part of a comprehensive scheme announced for the sector on Thursday.

Further, group worksheds with modern knitting machines will be established to provide required scale of economy for business operations and to improve working conditions. The government will also launch Yarn Bank Scheme providing interest free corpus fund to Special Purpose Vehicles or consortium of knitting units. This will enable them to purchase yarn at wholesale rate and give the yarn to the small knitting units to avoid middleman/ local suppliers. The government is providing interest free corpus fund up to Rs 2 crore per yarn bank.

Common facility Centres will be set up to provide facilities like processing, dyeing, printing, design development, testing facilities, ETP, etc. The government is providing subsidy of maximum Rs 4 crore for this.

Pradhan Mantri Credit Scheme will provide adequate and timely financial assistance to new entrepreneurs belonging to SC/ST and women categories in order to meet the credit requirements for investment needs. The financial assistance is provided in the form of margin money subsidy at 25 per cent basic cost of new machinery with a ceiling of Rs 25 lakh.

Under the Solar Energy Scheme, financial assistance/ capital subsidy will be offered to small units for installation of solar photo voltaic plants. Financial assistance of up to 50 per cent is provided for installation of on-grid solar photo voltaic (without battery) and off-grid solar photo voltaic (with battery). SC/ST entrepreneurs will get enhanced benefits of 75 per cent and 90 per cent of the cost of solar panels. Financial assistance will also be provided for increasing IT awareness, publicity and market development.