Piyush Goyal reviews ATUF Scheme to boost Indian textile industry

Piyush Goyal has reviewed the Amended Technology Up-gradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS) to boost the Indian textile industry by enabling ease of doing business, bolstering exports and fuelling employment

Union Minister Piyush Goyal has reviewed the Amended Technology Up-gradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS) to boost the Indian textile industry by enabling the ease of doing business, bolstering exports and fuelling employment, the textile ministry said on Sunday.

Textile Minister Goyal and Minister for State for Textiles Darshana Jardosh reviewed the scheme with various ministries, departments, textiles industry associations and banks at the 5th Inter Ministerial Steering Committee meeting organised by the textile ministry.

"They reviewed the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme to boost the Indian textile industry by enabling the ease of doing business, bolstering exports and fuelling employment," according to an official statement.

Apart from fixing the timeline for conduct of IMSC meeting quarterly, some significant decisions to resolve pending issues include reducing the compliance burden by accepting only single certificate from the concerned bank instead of multiple documents regarding evidence of payment for claimed machineries.

The decisions taken at the meeting also include the consideration of standalone embroidery machines with effect from inception of the ATUFS.

The Ministry of Textiles will simplify the procedure for joint inspection using a calibrated approach to linking joint inspect to subsidy support size by reducing burden on bracket lower than Rs 50 lakh instead of the current 100 per cent, it stated.

Addressing the meeting, Goyal said that despite the hindrances during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ministry and the office of textile commissioner have put serious efforts in resolving the policy constraints and settling of the claims.

He mentioned that a special measure was introduced to ease liquidity flow in the industry by introducing an option for getting part subsidy released against the bank guarantee.

Goyal noted that out of the total settlements under ATUFS since inception, about 61 per cent of claims have been settled during the peak of pandemic period i.e., in FY 2020-21, the ministry stated.

The minister also suggested that the ministry and the textile commissioner should rework the physical verification mechanism to automated verifications through video-conferencing mode.

He said provision for self-certification of machinery by units and random verification by office of the textile commissioner may be considered in place of the current physical inspection.

The textiles ministry had introduced the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme in 1999 as a credit-linked subsidy scheme intended for modernisation and technology up-gradation of the Indian textile industry, promoting ease of doing business, generating employment and promoting exports.

Since then, the scheme has been implemented in various versions.

The ongoing ATUFS was approved in 2016 and implemented through web-based iTUFS platform.

Under the scheme, the capital investment subsidy is provided to benchmarked machinery installed by the industry after physical verification.

ATUFS was approved for a period from 2015-16 to 2021-22 with an allocation of Rs 17,822 crore (Rs 12,671 crore for committed liability of previous versions of TUFS and Rs 5,151 crore for new cases under ATUFS).