Around Rs. 21.51 billion of the total Rs. 23.23 billion earmarked under the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) for 2012-13, have been disbursed by the Indian Textile Ministry, Minister of State for Textiles Panabaaka Lakshmi informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply. During the previous year, allocation under the same scheme stood at Rs. 37 billion, while disbursements totalled to Rs. 29.37 billion, she informed. The scheme, launched since 1999, aims at providing low-rate credit to local textile entrepreneurs in the organized as well as unorganised sector, to help them modernize and upgrade their textile facilities. The scheme mainly focuses on modernization of processing, spinning, weaving, garmenting and technical textiles segments, where there is good scope for massive employment generation and value-addition, the Minister said. Responding to another query, she also noted that the number of handlooms is coming down, since according to the 1995-96 Handloom Census, there were around 3.49 million handloom weavers in the country, but in 2009-10, this number reduced to 2.38 million. This is mainly because the handloom industry remains confronted with several issues like low productivity, tough competition from mills and powerlooms, dearth of raw materials, lacking marketing facilities and inadequate institutional credit flow, she added.
