Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) has thanked textile minister, Santosh Kumar Gangwar for several positive measures taken by the centre under his initiative for the growth of the textile sector.
‘We are confident that with your support and guidance, the whole textile industry, including exports will witness the growth and also provide more employment particularly to women hailing from rural area’, TEA said in a memorandum submitted to Gangwar during his visit to the Association in Tirupur on January 23.
TEA president, A. Sakthivel in the memorandum urged the minister to help expedite the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with Canada, a prominent market for garment exporters, for enhancing garment exports to that country.
He said in the ensuing ATFUS, apparel, garment and technical textile, where 15 per cent subsidy would be provided on capital investment subject to a ceiling of Rs. 30 crore for entrepreneurs over a period of five years. Sakthivel urged the minister to increase the ceiling limit to Rs. 50 crore to help the growth of garment sector.
Referring to the issue of Direct Tax, he said a deduction of 15 per cent of the value of new machinery acquired and installed is allowed as a deduction u/s 32AC, which is only available to the corporate sector and only for minimum investment of Rs. 25 crore. Sakthivel said most of the readymade garment industries operate under the SME sector.
In order to facilitate them to modernize their production using state-of-the-art-technologies, this benefit may be extended to the non-corporate sector with a reduced minimum investment of Rs. 01 crore. He also demanded fixing at a high level the limits for payment of cash, deduction of tax, acceptance of deposit etc. which were fixed at Rs. 20,000 long time ago and now becomes too low with the infusion level.
Sakthivel said treating of guideline values as the benchmark for assessing the capital gains puts genuine tax payers into acute hardship as the values are fixed arbitrarily. Some other methods for ascertaining the market value may be devised and small deviation margin may also be provided, he added.