What: Integrated Scheme for Development of Silk Industry
When: March 21, 2018
Who: Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
- The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on March 21, 2018 gave its approval for Central Sector Scheme “Integrated Scheme for Development of Silk Industry” for the next three years from 2017-18 to 2019-20.
- Four Components: The Scheme has four components:
- Research & Development (R&D), Training, Transfer of Technology and IT Initiatives,
- Seed Organizations and farmers extension centres,
- Coordination and Market Development for seed, yarn and silk products and
- Quality Certification System (QCS) by creating amongst others a chain of Silk Testing facilities, Farm based & post-cocoon Technology Up-gradation, and Export Brand Promotion.
- Financial Outlay: A total allocation of Rs.2161.68 Crore has been approved for the implementation of the Scheme for three years from 2017-18 to 2019-20. The scheme will be implemented by the Ministry through Central Silk Board (CSB).
What will be the impact?
- The scheme is expected to increase the silk production from the level of 30348 MTs during 2016-17 to 38500 MTs by end of 2019-20 with the production of import substitute bivoltine silk to the tune of 8500 MTs per annum by 2020 and research & development to improve productivity from the present level of 100 Kgs to 111 kgs of silk per ha. of plantation by the end of 2019-20. Also large scale propagation of improved reeling machines (Automatic Reeling Machine for mulberry; improved reeling/spinning machineries and Buniyad reeling machines for Vanya silk) under Make in India programme to produce quality silk to cater to the market demand.
- The scheme will promote Women Empowerment and livelihood opportunities to SC/ST and other weaker sections of the society. The scheme will help to increase productive employment from 85 lakhs to 1 crore persons by 2020.
How is it different from the earlier scheme?
- The scheme has following improvement over the earlier scheme:
- The scheme aims to achieve self-sufficiency in silk production by 2022. To achieve this, production of high grade silk in India will reach 20,650 MTs by 2022 from the current level of 11,326 MTs thereby reducing imports to Zero.
- For the first time, there is clear focus on improving production of highest grade quality of silk. It is proposed to increase 4A grade silk from the current level of 15% to 25 % of mulberry production by 2020.
- The implementation strategy is clearly based on convergence at the State level with the schemes of other Ministers like MGNREGS of Rural Development, RKVY & PMKSY of Ministry of Agriculture, for maximizing benefits to the sericulturists.
- The R&D projects pertaining to disease resistant silkworm, host plant improvements, productivity enhancing tools and implements for reeling and waving etc. will be done in cooperation with Ministries i.e. Science and Technology, Agriculture and Human Resource Development (HRD).
Objectives
- The core objective of the scheme is to improve the productivity and quality of silk through R&D intervention. The focus of R&D intervention is to promote improved crossbreed silk and the import substitute Bivoltine silk so that Bivotine silk production in India enhances to such a level that raw silk imports become nil by 2022 thereby making India self-sufficient in silk.
