New Delhi: The textiles ministry may get a 15% bump in allocation for FY26 to around ₹5,080 crore, including a 33% rise in budgetary funds for the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for textiles.
In 2024-25, the allocation for the textiles ministry was ₹4,417.03 crore. The extant allocation for the PLI scheme for technical textiles and man-made fibre (MMF) apparel and products is ₹45 crore and is expected to go up to ₹60 crore in FY26. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will announce the budget for 2025-26 on February 1.
The government approved the PLI scheme for textiles in 2021 with an outlay of ₹10,683 crore over a five-year period to promote production of MMF apparel, MMF fabrics and products of technical textiles in the country to enable textiles industry to achieve size and scale and to become competitive.
“We have an ambitious target for the textiles industry and are looking at ways to encourage domestic manufacturing. Some measures could be announced in the budget,” said an official.
India aims to achieve $600 billion of textiles exports by 2047 and expansion of the domestic market to $1.8 trillion from $110 billion in 2022. India’s textiles exports in April-December FY25 were $26.6 billion.
However, the country depends on imports of textiles machinery such as auto-corners, winders and fancy doublers for spinning and knitting machines to make garments, and the industry has sought a scheme to enable local machine manufacturing. “To support the industry, the government may come up with a scheme providing an interest subsidy at 7% for at least 10 years to enable the manufacturer to settle down,” said Rakesh Mehra, chairman, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry.
Similarly, spun lace, spun bond, mask, special fibres braiding needle punch multi-axial looms and net knitting for technical textiles along with machines for synthetic dyeing used in processing are also currently imported.
