SIMA elects new chairman

The Southern India Mills Association on Monday elected Ashwin Chandran as its chairman and Ravi Sam as the deputy chairman and S K Sundararaman as vice-chairman for the year 2019-2020.

Speaking at the 60th general meeting of the association here, outgoing chairman P Nataraj said the country has been projected as the fastest growing economy in the world, as the world GDP was estimated at three per cent and India's at 7.4 per cent despite the grim situation the worldover.

The impact of two major reforms - demonetisation and GST (goods and services tax) affected the performance of manufacturing industries and the economy during the last two years.

Before it could fully recover, worldwide recession, particularly the US-China trade war, has again affected the national economic growth, he said.

The Indian textiles and clothing industry, especially the capital-intensive spinning sector, was facing yet another major crisis, he said.

The crisis was due to volatility in cotton prices and currency value, steep fall in exports, piling-up of stocks, production cut, severe liquidity crunch, significant increase in cheaper imports of MMF (man-made fibre) spun yarns, synthetic fabrics and ready-made garments, he said.

"We have requested the government to take appropriate remedial policy measures, clear all the government dues on a fast track and extend the rebate on state and central tax and levies benefits for all manufactured textile goods across the value chain to enable the industry to revive itself from the recession, Nataraj said.

The Tamil Nadu government had announced the Integrated Textile Policy 2019 during March which encourages value addition, strengthening of downstream sectors, encouraging modernisation in spinning, he said.

On the performance of industry, he said all yarn production during 2018-19 stood at 5,862 million kg, 3.2 per cent higher than previous year's production of 5,680 millions kg, while production during 2019-20 (April -June) stood at 1,591 million kg, 9.6 per cent higher than previous year's production of 1,452 million kgs.

The cotton yarn export has declined by over 35 per cent during the first quarter of the current financial year compared to last year same quarter, Nataraj said.

The yarn export was the lowest in June 2019 in the last five years recording only 57 million kg, which has also affected the domestic market, he added.