Textile parks held up owing to lack of environmental clearance and power shortage

The state textiles ministers’ conference was held on Tuesday to discussion on the status of integrated textile parks, launched with major concern for textile industry a couple of years ago. A statement was released at the meeting that about a dozen of textile parks in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Rajasthan are stuck with state governments.

These textile parks are being set up under public-private partnership during the 12th five-year plan as part of the government’s vision to push textiles exports to $300 billion by 2025 from the current $39 billion.

Hindupur Vyapar Apparel Park and Brandix India Apparel City in Andhra are held up due to power shortage and one of them has problems with its land lease as well. Three textile parks were to be set up in the state, of which two have run into difficulty.

In Tamil Nadu, the situation is no better. Four of the nine textile parks that were to come up have run into environmental clearance problem. They are Per¬arignar Anna handloom silk park, SLS textile park, Pallavada textile park and SIMA textile processing centre.

In Rajasthan two of the six textile parks — Himmada integrated textile park and Jaipur texweaving park have been unable to get environmental clearance from the state pollution control board.

The textile sector would have been able to mopped up $120 billion and generated an additional 35 million jobs had the plan been implemented according to its schedule.