DMK president M. Karunanidhi on Tuesday requested Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ask the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to immediately notify the loan restructuring package announced last month for the textile industry.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, he stated that unless this was done, loan availed of by several hundred textile units and thousands of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) would become non-performing assets (NPAs) by June 30.
Though the Finance Ministry announced the package on May 29, the RBI was yet to issue a notification that would enable individual banks to consider the applications of the textile units.
“This notification is essential to avoid NPA as most of the textile units had availed the first restructuring facility announced by the government for the global recession during 2009.” Thanking the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister for announcing a debt restructuring package of Rs.35,000 crore for the ailing textile industry, he said that Tamil Nadu accounted for a third of the textile business and 47.5 per cent of the spinning capacity of the country. The survival of several lakh of handloom weavers, cotton farmers, powerloom weavers and garment workers depended on the performance of the textile industry in Tamil Nadu.
