Baroda, July 07: Union Textile Minister Kanshiram Rana today said financial assistance of Rs 1800 crore to 308 ginning and pressing factories in Gujarat will help reduce contamination in cotton and enable various types of Gujarat cotton including hybrid-4, hybrid-6 and Kalyan to be marketed clean. Talking to a news agency on phone, Rana said it is for the first time that such a huge sum of financial assistance is given to Gujarat which will help them in modernizing and upgrading these ginning and pressing units. Due to this programme, the units will produce low trash and least contaminated cotton which will be acceptable to the Indian Textile Mills, he said. The export earnings from textiles during 2001-2002 was Rs 60,000 crore which was less by Rs 4000 crore as against the export target of Rs 6400 crore, the minister said adding, the decline in export figure was due to various factors including September 11 attack.

This year the export earnings from textiles has been targetted at Rs 65,000 crore, he said. It has also been decided to give a financial assistance of Rs 2180 crore to 427 ginning and pressing factories in Tamil Nadu and Rs 1059.96 crore to 65 factories in Maharashtra for modernization and upgradation of the technology, he said.

Bureau Report