The Council for Leather Exports (CLE) has urged the government to extend the benefits of the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme to the sector as it would help in boosting manufacturing, creating jobs and increasing exports.
The government had announced the PLI scheme for 13 sectors with an outlay of Rs 1.97 lakh crore. The sectors include textiles, auto, steel, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals.
The objective of the scheme is to make domestic manufacturing globally competitive and to create global champions in manufacturing. The strategy behind the scheme is to offer companies incentives on incremental sales from products manufactured in India, over the base year.
In a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitahraman, CLE Chairman Sanjay Leekha said that implementing PLI for the sector will be a major catalyst for achieving substantial growth and employment generation.
“I would request that the scheme may kindly be extended to the leather, leather products and footwear sector,” he said.
He has also urged for extending the emergency credit line guarantee scheme (ECLGS 2.0) to the sector as it would help in enhancing the capacities and in recovering from the adverse impact of Covid-19.
At present, he said, only ECLGS 1.0 is applicable for the MSME units in leather, leather products and footwear sector.
“As our sector suffered immense export losses due to covid, there is a need to provide additional credit at lower interest rates,” Leekha said.
On exports, he said the council is sure to achieve the exports target of USD 5.89 billion during the current fiscal.
“Considering the emerging business opportunities on account of shift of business orders from China, we are confident of achieving the target,” he said adding the council is looking at USD 10 billion exports by 2025.