Amended Technology Up-gradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS)

Amended Technology Up-gradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS)

Part of: Prelims and GS III – Economy  

Context Union Minister of Textiles reviewed the Amended Technology Up-gradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS) to boost the Indian textile industry by enabling the ease of doing business, bolstering exports and fuelling employment.

Key takeaways 

• The Ministry of Textiles had introduced Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) in 1999 as a credit linked subsidy scheme.
• Objective: 
  • modernization and technology up-gradation of the Indian textile industry, 
  • promoting ease of doing business, 
  • generating employment and promoting exports.
• Since then, the scheme has been implemented in different versions.
• The ongoing ATUFS has been approved in 2016 and implemented through the web based iTUFS platform. 
• Capital Investment Subsidy is provided to benchmarked machinery installed by the industry after physical verification.
• ATUFS was approved for a period from 2015-16 to 2021-22 with an allocation of Rs. 17,822 crore 
• The scheme is administered with a two stage monitoring mechanism by Technical Advisory-cum-Monitoring Committee (TAMC) and Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee (IMSC). 
• In 2019, IMSC decided to introduce physical verification of machinery and computation of subsidy before releasing committed liability under previous versions of the schem