ROADMAP FOR ATMANIRBHAR BHARAT IN TEXTILE MACHINERY MOOTED
The Office Bearers of Textiles Machinery Manufactures Association (India), led by Mr. Vallabh Thumar, Chairman (CMD-Weavetech Group), Mr. Sachin Kumar-Executive Director, and foremost indigenous and foreign Textiles Machine Manufacturers had a hybrid interaction (Physical + Virtual) with the Hon’ble Union Minister of Textiles, Mr Piyush Goyal and Hon’ble Minister for State for Textiles, Ms Darshana Vikram Jardosh on 22nd October 2021 to develop a facilitating Ecosystem for growth of the Textiles Engineering Industry (TEI) in India under Atmanirbhar Bharat India in order to (1) Compete globally in all industry segments on strength of technology and scale, (2) Initiatives towards Atmanirbhar Bharat: Meet 75% of domestic demand by 2026-27 and (3) Cost reduction for the textile manufacturers and enhancement of value exports. In this meeting 15 textile machines manufactures of foreign regions; 20 leading indigenous textile manufactures and 7 textile machinery and associated industry associations have participated and submitted their viewpoints. Mr Piyush Goyal urged the industry to focus on speed, skill and scale by getting into innovative partnerships and developing 100 Indian Textile Machinery Champions recognized across the world. Mr Piyush Goyal Ji also urged all to get out of Command- and-Control mindset and work through Plug and Play model to make the textile sector more vibrant in name and sprit.
Alluding to achieving 100 crore vaccination and the Chandrayan-1 mission, Mr Piyush Goyal urged the industry to be inspired by the volumes in vaccination to scaleup while look at the precision in Indian space programme sector to bring the Mojo back. The Ministry of Textiles, Government of India being the Ministry of user industry of textile machines and with the aim to reduce the capital cost of our textiles and apparel manufactures is well aware that the machinery is the most critical input underlying the production and capacities of the whole textile value chain. However, there are various issues hindering manufacturing of textile machinery used particularly for weaving, knitting, processing, embroidery, garmenting and technical textiles sub-sectors benchmarked to international standards. Presently 75% of requirement of machinery is being imported and though we have certain strengths, domestic textile engineering industry is able to meet 25% of requirements. As such a number of measures with PLI and MITRA have been taken to expand the textile production and export which consequently would result in higher demand of technology and machinery.
Kalam Institute of Health Technology (KIHT), Visakhapatnam (which has developed required infrastructure for manufacturing of medical devices in a limited time) after due consultations with all related stakeholders, has suggested manufacturing of critical components of the textiles machines as one of the interventions for promotions. These are at present being imported by our textiles machine manufactures. Hence, manufacturing of critical components needs critical support consideration since strengthening of the vertical would enable reducing costs while augmenting benchmark technology riding on possibilities of Make in India. This would contribute to value enhancement and employment generation. Efforts of strengthening machinery manufacturing would go a long way in our quest for sustainable textile ecosystem, enhancement of value exports of textile goods and contribute significantly to building an Atmanirbhar Bharat.
Based on the submissions and inputs provided by the industry leaders during this interaction meeting, the Government would be able to further strengthen the ecosystem among the related ministries as well as related industry associations including IT Industry, machine tools and plastic industries for manufacturing of the textiles machinery which are currently being imported into the country. This would also help the Government to devise short term, medium term and long-term action plan in the direction of Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives of our Hon’ble Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi.
