Job working units in Tirupur knitwear cluster hoped that their difficulties in availing duty benefits under Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) scheme for machinery import, may be addressed soon. The centre has started examining the issues related to problems they are facing, according to a report.

The problems for the garment industry started subsequent to an amendment in the Foreign Trade Policy that came into effect from July 1 last year, mandating the job working units in printing, dyeing and knitting, and other segments to establish a direct link between machinery imported and the finished goods exported.

In clusters such as Tirupur, vertical integration of production capacities was not much and the units were spread out across the cluster, doing job work.

T. R. Srikanth, president of Tirupur Export Knit Printers Association, pointed out that after the amendment came into effect, the duty benefits were denied for many of the costly machines imported in the cluster.