Coimbatore : The 59th annual general meeting of Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) today unanimously re-elected the present office bearers for second term for the period 2018-2019.

Accordingly, P Nataraj, Managing Director of KPR Mill Ltd, will continue as Chairman for the period.

K Vinayakam, Managing Director of SCM Textile Spinners, Avinashi will be Deputy Chairman, while Ashwin Chandran Chairman and Managing director Precot Meridien Ltd, will continue as vice-chairman of the association.

In his address, Nataraj said that though India economy has been impacted due to demonetistaion and GST implementation during the 2017-18, the economic performance was back to normal and signals a steady growth path.

A major policy initiatives that could address the GST related issues were reduction of GST on man-made filament and spun yarn from 18 to 12 per cent, inclusion of all textile job work under 5 per cent GST and allowing the refund of accumulated input tax credit due to inverted duty structure on fabrics.

Though all the major demands relating to GST have been addressed, we still have some more issues to be addressed.

On performance of the industry, Nataraj said that during 2017-18 it has been slightly better than the previous year.

All yarn and cloth production in 2017-18 increased marginally to 5,676 million kgs and 66,524 million square metres over previous year production of 5,667 million kgs and 63,482 million square metres respectively, he said.

Global export and import of all commodities in 2017 registered an increase of about 11 per cent over previous year export and import and India’s export of all commodities in 2017-18 registered a positive growth of 10 per cent, while import registered by 21 per cent than previous year, Nataraj said.