Southern India Mills Association (SIMA) on Saturday said that the reduced rate of GST for MMF yarn from 18 to 12 per cent would greatly benefit the spinning and power loom sector, improve global competitiveness and cloth the poor masses of the nation at an affordable cost.

In a statement, SIMA Chairman P. Nataraj said the man-made fibres (MMF) and yarns were slotted under 18 per cent GST rate while the fabrics under 5 per cent with a condition that no refund of Input Tax Credit would be allowed at fabric stage.

This was creating a huge inverted duty problem for the synthetic sector and inflating the cost of synthetic products that already had serious threat by cheaper imports.

The industry has been pleading the GST Council to reduce MMF yarn rate to 12 per cent to avoid cost escalation of yarn and facilitate the power loom sector to remain competitive, Nataraj said and thanked union textile minister Smriti Irani for her concerted efforts made to reduce the MMF filament yarn and MMF spun yarn including filament sewing thread GST rate from 18 per cent to 12.

Meanwhile, in a separate statement, Indian Texpreneurs Federation convener, Prabhu Dhamodharan said that with better GST rates to both cotton and MMF and Blended sectors, industry can expect improvement in utilisation level in the short term and also more investment in weaving and processing sectors in the medium term.