Jute Technology Mission Corpus Fixed At Rs 150 Cr

The union ministry of textiles is believed to have fixed the corpus for the Jute Technology Mission at Rs 150 crore.

The minister of textiles, Kashiram Rana, has also assured the Rajya Sabha that the ministry is engaged in the formulation of the Jute Technology Mission to address the issues of jute productivity, income of the jute farmers, research on high yielding varieties, transfer of technology, improving productivity in manufacturing sector, diversification of jute products, in the domestic market as well as external marketing.

It may be mentioned that the Cotton Technology Mission has a corpus of Rs 593 crore. Apparently, the Union government is planning to merge the Jute Modernisation Fund Scheme (JMFS) and the Jute Development Fund Scheme (JDFS) to create the corpus of the Technology Mission. JMFS and JDFS were created by the government with a corpus of Rs 150 crore and Rs 100 crore respectively.

 

Under the above two schemes, 42 applications were received from the jute mill units, out of which five were withdrawn, nine cases were not found support-worthy and three cases are awaiting disposal by BIFR. The remaining 25 cases were sanctioned Rs 97.72 crore.

Though the Funds are still with the ministry, the schemes have been abolished. The Technology Mission will have mini missions like Research, Transfer of Technology and Post-harvest Technology, Market Linkages for Raw Jute, Productivity in the Organised Sector, Product Development and Export of Raw jute.

The National Level Mission will be managed by an Empowered Committee. Monitoring by the Committee will be on a quarterly basis.

The output at the end of the Mission will be measured in quantitative terms.