Welcoming the demonetisation scheme, the Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF), a body of textile industry in the region, today sought some practical help from the Centre to ease the short term pains following the withdrawal of high value notes.

In a letter to Union Textiles Minister, Smriti Irani, ITF said the industry was ready to absorb short term pains for the long term definite gains and was confident about strong consumption driven growth in future due to this cleaning up act, which was good for the industry to organise itself towards a efficient business operations.

However, the industry was looking for some practical help from the Government, as due to low spending, consumption was taking a hit and the retailers naturally were reducing the purchases, which was affecting the manufacturing in terms of poor off take of yarn and fabrics form the buyers, ITF secretary, Prabhu Dhamodharan said.

“During this dull times, it was natural for the trade to expect more credit from manufacturers like spinning mills, our collections also badly hit and being a peak cotton season, mills need more money in both sides for more credit in yarn sales and more money required to store cotton,” he said.

Stating that the mills were placing their individual requests to their respective bankers for enhancement of working capital, ITF requested the Centre to advise banks to consider the requests or grant one time short term working capital requirements.

” Any reduction in interest rates will help working capital intensive industry like spinning to ease out some pains due to low volume of business and with more low cost money in the hands of banks,” he said adding “this move is possible and will trigger positive sentiments across the industry.”

Due to sluggish domestic demand, there was an urgent need for spinning sector to export yarn to international markets, so that, sales pressure will come down here in domestic and also mills can run with full capacity without comprising utilisation levels, he pointed out.

With Merchandise Export from India Scheme (MEIS), can increase the cost competitiveness of our product to help spinning sector to capture more market share in exports, Prabhu said and appealed to the Minister to recommend the measures to finance ministry for further action.