Letters: Sops for socks

This refers to the report “Interest sops for exporters may be extended” (February 4). In October 2010, the government withdrew the interest subvention of 2 per cent for sock manufacturing units. Though socks are covered under textiles, the government has removed socks and various other items that are basically textile products.

Sock manufacturing is a labour-intensive sector. The interest subvention withdrawal has made exports unfeasible and units that have been forced to carry out the orders are incurring huge losses.

The government should immediately restore the interest subvention benefit for all textiles and textile accessories such as scarves, socks and knitted garments with retrospective effect. The government should also extend the scheme to labour-intensive sectors like carpets, textiles and certain small and medium enterprises.

The government shouldn’t have withdrawn the scheme abruptly without giving manufacturers adequate notice. That too when the withdrawal was mentioned in the fine print. This has adversely affected corporations like ours, which is a completely export-oriented sock manufacturing unit.

Currently, our corporation employs 350 people and once our expansion is completed, we will have more than 1,000 people.

We, therefore, request the finance minister, textiles minster and commerce and industry minister to restore the interest subvention scheme for sock manufacturing units and extend the scheme for labour-intensive industries. This will help us boost exports and compete in the international market.

S Brijkumar, Hyderabad

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