The Karnataka Cabinet has cleared the New Textile & Garment Policy 2019-2024. The new policy brings in a few changes to the existing policy, to make the state a leading destination in the textile and apparel sector and to make the textile value chain into a gold mine value chain.
The new policy aims to attract Rs 10,000 crore investments and create over five lakh job opportunities.
The overall budget requirement for implementation of the policy is expected to be around Rs 2,282.86 crore to be spread over the next eight to nine years. During the policy period between 2019-24 the budget requirement is about Rs 1,582.17 crore.
The new policy provides for capacity building and vendor development, and envisages creation of centres of excellence for textiles/technical textiles.
The policy has come out with zonal classification which includes -- Zone 1: entire Hyderabad-Karnataka region; Zone 2: all areas other than municipal corporations, district headquarters in non-Hyderabad-Karnataka region; Zone 3: all municipal corporations, district headquarters in non-Hyderabad-Karnataka region, and Zone 4: Bengaluru urban and Bengaluru rural districts.
As for incentives and subsidies, the policy has credit linked capital subsidy for MSMEs, large enterprises and interest subsidy for large enterprises, power subsidy for MSMEs and large enterprises.
The policy also aims to offer segment wise incentives such as ginning, spinning, weaving -- handloom and powerlooms, processing, integrated units, garmenting fashion/buying houses, technical textiles, silk and wool.
Moreover, a special package is available for mega units -- for textiles it is for fixed investments above Rs 300 crore and minimum employment of 350; for garments units it is for fixed investments above Rs 200 crore and minimum employment of 3,000 people.
The new policy plans to offer cluster-based development strategy for providing infrastructure development for greenfield textile parks, brownfield cluster development and common effluent treatment plant and hazardous waste disposal facility.
The state’s exports were registered at Rs 5.48 lakh crore in 2016-17 which accounted to around 18.78 percent of the country’s exports. The state contributes 49 percent to mulberry silk, 12 percent to wool and six percent of cotton production in the country.