Textiles & handicrafts recipients of govt largesse

Today, the Government of India extended incentives amounting to Rs 10.52 billion to exporters, mainly for labour intensive sectors like leather, handicrafts and textiles.

These sops will help these industries to survive through the still-fragile global economic recovery.

The benefits which have been extended are through the various schemes like DEPB, under which taxes are reimbursed to exporters, subsidized interest and incentives for import of capital goods.

However the government made it clear that this would be the last time that incentives would be available on the DEPB scheme and it would not be extended again, since it is against WTO rules.

Handloom, handicrafts, carpet and SMEs have been availing the facility of two percent interest subvention scheme, now additional products from sectors like leather, textiles, engineering, and jute have also been added to the scheme.

The zero-duty Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) scheme too has been extended by a period of one year to March 31, 2012, which was originally set to expire on March 31, 2011.

Transactions costs were a bane for exporters and which totaled to around 7-8 percent of the export value. Steps to reduce these costs too were announced, which has been welcomed by one and all.