Coimbatore : The Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) Friday asppreciated the unique initiative of encouraging scale of operation through the Mega Textile Park Scheme.

The flagship programme of Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme had attracted over Rs.4 lakh crore during the last two decades and the Scheme for Integrated Textile Parks, enabled the power loom sector and few other decentralized sectors to consolidate in different clusters and go for modern technology, CII Chairman T Rajkumar said in a release here.

Union textile ministry, under leadership of textile minister, Smriti Zubin Irani is in the process of formulating the new Textile Policy, which is likely to be announced this year, he said.

As part of this, the Ministry has been conducting series of meetings for each segment and is in the process of drafting the Policy with the objective of making Indian textile industry a true global leader by improving its competitiveness, bridging the technology gap, encouraging sustainability and creating global brands for Indian textiles and clothing products.

In this endeavor, the Ministry has started a bold initiative of mitigating the major challenge of scale of operation through the proposed Mega Textile Park and Textile Secretary Ravi Capoor had convened a meeting with the industry stakeholders and the senior officials of various State governments on February 17 and gathered necessary inputs to frame the scheme, Rajkumar said.

The country has been suffering with scale of operation and the new entrants like Bangladesh, Vietnam could grab the space vacated by China due to scale of operation and cost competitiveness, he pointed out.

He said that at the global brands meeting chaired by Union Textile Minister, Smriti Irani, most of the brands having retails in India, had stated that they had to import from countries like China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka due to volume and cost advantage and also stated that India does not have large players to meet their demands.

The Central Government is making efforts to attract FDI, joint venture projects and also encourage large vertically integrated textile giants in the country to make investments in the proposed Mega Textile Parks by setting up of a large scale vertically integrated textile manufacturing units, he stated.

The Government is contemplating to extend maximum support for the infrastructure facilities including land by the State governments, water, power, road connectivity,special priority in the port, relaxation in labour laws, he said.

The government is also planning to market the Scheme in different countries to attract FDI and joint venture projects jointly with the State Governments, Rajkumar said adding that the proposed Mega Textile Park Scheme would throw more opportunities for the textile industry to cater to domestic markets and also international markets.