The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) has thanked the Prime Minister for approving the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS).
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by the Prime Minister yesterday approved the introduction of “Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS)” in place of the existing revised restructured TUF scheme with effect from the date of notification of the scheme.
A budget provision of Rs.17,822 crore has been approved, of which Rs. 12,671 crore is for committed liabilities under the ongoing scheme, and Rs. 5,151 crore is for new cases under ATUFS.
SIMA Chairman, M Senthilkumar in a release said that the new sanctions under TUFS were kept pending since April 2014 for want of funds. He thanked textiles minister, Santhosh Kumar Gangwar for persuading the finance ministry and PMO and making the continuation of TUFS a success.
Senthilkumar said the ATUFS would ease the textile industry’s financial position and enable it to plan investments.
The SIMA chief welcomed the announcement of capital subsidy in lieu of existing combination of interest subsidy and capital subsidy and felt that the textile units making investments would be in a position to get timely assistance without any problem. Several hundreds of units have been affected under the earlier schemes due to the lack of transparency and the mistakes committed by the bankers, he said.
Senthilkumar said th-e i-TUFS software launched in April 2015 would make the scheme very transparent and enable the investors to track the position of their applications and avoid mistakes and delays. He expressed the hope that the A-TUFS and i-TUFS would enable all the stakeholders to implement the scheme without hassles and the subsidy would reach the beneficiaries on time.
