Rs 8.3cr aid provided to 6,572 weavers in 2 dists: Min

Kendrapada: The ministry has provided Rs 8.38 crore in financial assistance to 6,572 weavers across 17 handloom clusters in Cuttack and Bargarh from 2015-16 to Nov this year, minister of state for textiles Pabitra Margherita informed the Rajya Sabha on Friday.

The ministry has trained 5,856 weavers, organised 69 marketing events and distributed 7,685 Mudra loans. Over 71,442 weavers are now enrolled under PMJJBY/PMSBY schemes. Monthly financial aid reaches 56 award-winning weavers, while nine producer companies have been formed to help handloom weavers, including women, during the period, said the minister.


Replying to a question by Debashish Samantaray, the minister further said that design resource centres have been set up in 16 weavers’ service centres nationwide, including one in Bhubaneswar. The ministry runs the ‘handloom marketing sssistance’ programme to boost national and international market reach. Special attention is given to promoting Geographical Indication (GI) tag for handloom products, including Odisha ikat.

In a major infrastructure push, the govt has approved seven PM Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel (PM Mitra) Parks in Tamil Nadu (Virudhnagar), Telangana (Warangal), Gujarat (Navsari), Karnataka (Kalaburagi), Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow), Madhya Pradesh (Dhar), and Maharashtra (Amravati). The project has a budget of Rs 4,445 crore and will run until 2027-28, he added.

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