To: Members of the Council
Sub: Highlights of the 3rd IMSC meeting held on 27.2.2019 - reg
The third meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee (IMSC) of Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (A-TUFS) was held on Wednesday, 27th February 2019 at Udyog Bhavan, New Delhi under the Chairpersonship of the Hon’ble Union Textile Minister, Smt Smriti Zubin Irani. Senior officials of the Ministry of Textiles attended the meeting.
On behalf of the industry, Mr.Sanjay K Jain, Chairman, CITI, Dr K Selvaraju, Secretary General, SIMA, Mr.S.Balaraju, Executive Director, SRTEPC, Dr S Sunanda, Secretary General, CITI, Mr.S P Katnauria of SRTEPC, Dr S K Sundararaman, President, ITTA, Mr.Purushotham Vanga, immediate Past President, PDEXCIL attended the meeting.
The highlights of the meeting are as follows: -
- Consequent to the observations made by CAG and PAC while scrutinizing 3000 accounts, the Ministry of Textiles (MoT) had to revise the guidelines to curb misuse of the scheme and ensure proper disbursal of the subsidies. A-TUFS guidelines, though they are cumbersome to implement, the Government is constrained to follow certain protocols to prevent any misuse. The industry expressed the difficulties in implementing certain guidelines, delay in finalizing the eligible machinery under the indicative list of A-TUFS, i-TUFS software problems, delay in joint inspection due to inadequate strength, etc., it was decided to condone all the delayed cases, except the delay caused by the units themselves.
- The joint inspection will be carried out for all the pending TUFS cases including the older versions of TUFS scheme, video record of JIT inspection carried out and uploaded the report within 24 hours of inspection without any editing. In case, the machinery got replaced that were purchased under the old schemes, the units have to provide necessary commercial documents and bank documents to prove that the machinery was purchased, installed and used. The MoT advised to encourage certification on par with the vision of the Hon’ble Prime Minister and enable Ease of Doing Business so that the industry would be in a position to provide necessary documents without any harassment. The MoT will monitor the performance of the officials of the Joint Inspection Team and prevent any inspector raj or harassment. The MoT will come out with proper protocol for joint inspection.
- Preference will be given for technical textiles and care will be taken to ensure that the investments are disbursed equally amongst all the sectors, especially the weaker sectors and emerging sectors.
- In case of committed liabilities of M-TUFS, M-TUFS List-I cases, M-TUFS List-II cases, R-TUFS and M-TUFS left out cases including CCI dispute cases would be reviewed by an Internal Committee headed by Secretary (Textiles) and considered for disbursal of subsidy. The joint inspection might also be conducted, if required.
- The industry indicated that except the committed liability issue of M-TUFS, for all the List-II cases, the Committee constituted by MoT had already finalised the committed liabilities and therefore, the same could be considered immediately and the subsidy could be disbursed. Considering the strong observations made by PAC and CAG, the MoT may not take immediate decision on this matter. Since NABCONS study could not come out without any strong recommendations, the same has been dropped.
- Certain modifications and clarifications in the revised guidelines were considered and approved. However, the onetime correction of UID was not considered. It is essential to prepare a detailed representation and take up the matter again with the Ministry. The Secretary (Textiles) would review and consider only cases which had problem due to banks or the JIT.
- IMSC approved inclusion of standalone embroidery units under A-TUFS.
- With regard to inclusion of certain machinery that have combinations of two or more machines manufactured by different manufacturers, the same would be considered based on the purpose, segment, type of products, etc. Considering the need in technical textiles segment for such machinery, the enlistment will be made immediately for technical textiles especially for products for which HSN Codes have already been announced.
- IMSC considered the representations sent by SIMA for the technical textiles UID left out cases under R-TUFS and decided to recommend to Cabinet for consideration.
- Since the definition for MSMEs would be changed based on sales turnover, the IMSC wanted to restrict the investment cap to prevent the interests of small-scale units especially, the powerloom segments.
The Minutes of the meeting will be sent to the members as and when the same is received from the Ministry.
S. Balaraju
Executive Director
SRTEPC
