5-Year Cotton Mission Announced to Increase Cotton Productivity

Tirlok Aggarwal

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16-02-2025

6 min read

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The Budget announced an outlay of Rs. 5,272 crores (Budget Estimates) for the Ministry of Textiles for 2025-26. This is an increase of 19 percent over budget estimates of 2024-25 (Rs. 4417.03 crore).

5-Year Cotton Mission

To address the challenges of stagnant cotton productivity, Union Budget 2025-26 has announced a five-year Cotton Mission to increase cotton productivity especially extra-long staple varieties.

Science & Technology support will be provided to farmers under this Mission. The Mission is in keeping with the 5 F principle and will increase income of the farmers and augment a steady supply of quality cotton.

To promote domestic production of technical textile products such as agro-textiles, medical textiles and geo textiles at competitive prices, two more types of shuttles-less looms added to the list of fully exempted textile machinery.

This provision will reduce the cost of high-quality imported looms thus facilitating modernization and capacity enhancement initiatives in the weaving sector. This will also boost Make in India in technical textile sector viz. agro textiles, medical textiles, and geo-textiles.

Basic Custom Duty rate on knitted fabrics covered by nine tariff lines increased from 10% or 20% to 20% or Rs.115 per kg, whichever is higher This will improve competitiveness of Indian knitted fabric manufacturers and curb cheap imports.

To facilitate exports of handicrafts, time period for export extended from six months to one year, further extendable by another three months, if required Handicraft exports will benefit from this provision extending the list of items and the time period for conversion of duty-free raw material imports meant for export production.

80% of India’s textile sector is in MSME. Budget thrust on export, enhanced credit and coverage will uplift textile MSMEs.

Other announcements like creation of National Manufacturing Mission, Export Promotion Mission, creating the Bharat Trade Net, Fund of Funds, Measures for Labor-Intensive Sectors to promote employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, revision in classification criteria for MSMEs and others will create conducive environment for the textile sector.