Srinagar: Federation of Chambers of Industries Kashmir (FCIK) has informed the central government that 85 percent of industrial units will close operations by March 2022 in case the present Rs 28400 crore Industrial Development Scheme (IDS) is not extended to present existing industry.
According to a statement issued here, FCIK delegation led by its president Shahid Kamili, Senior Vice President Ghulam Jeelani and Secretary General Owais Jamie expressed the grave concerns of Kashmir based industry to Som Prakash, Minister of State for Commerce during an interaction in Srinagar.
It said that the delegation sought applicability of Central Industrial Scheme to existing MSMES:
“All the incentives provided in the Rs 28400 crore new Central Industrial Scheme need to be made applicable to the existing MSMEs before these are extended to new enterprises,” FCIK president informed the Minister.
The delegation informed the Union Minister that the industrial policies and schemes launched by the central and state governments particularly during the past three decades have miserably failed.
It said that FCIK laid stress upon the implementation of present industrial policy 2016-26 in letter and spirit and also gave the hotel industry an opportunity to file their incentive claims during the currency of 2012-2017 where they have missed it because of flaws in guidelines.
Regarding the marketing support, FCIK President Kamili said that more than 60% of the industrial units in Kashmir are engaged in manufacture and processing activities. ” However, with a sudden change in the procurement policy early this year, the finance department, on the instructions of the central government, has directed all departments to make their procurements through the GeM portal under an open competition. This has resulted in joblessness of the local units as almost all purchases by the departments for the past two years have been made from outside units,” he informed.
The delegation also demanded compensation of Business Losses incurred by the Industry in Kashmir since 1989.
It would be quite interesting to note that the central government came up with an interest subvention package for the Covid lockdown period but no such package was approved for J&K for several months’ lockdown post abrogation of Article 370 in September 2019, he maintained.
FCIK demanded the Constitution of a high level committee to work out the perpetual business losses incurred by enterprises because of forced interruptions during imposed curfews and strikes in the past three decades.