AGARTALA, June 20 (TIWN): The state government is readying a master plan for augmenting industrial sector in a time bound manner, Industries and Commerce minister Tapan Chakraborty said here.

Speaking to reporters, Tapan - who was recently appointed as minister in-charge for Industries and Commerce, said that there was no specific mechanism to assess revenue generation from many industrial sectors. “Officials were asked to prepare a series of documents to find out the available resources and the potential that it holds within one month. We are looking at conducting a survey to find out industrial resources like tea gardens, cane and bamboo artifacts, sericulture, rubber, gas based industry etc”, he said.

The survey is reported to be focusing on available workforce and scopes for further augmentation matching the larger national market requirements. Stress is being laid on skill development, self employment etc. “The study would give us a detailed picture on contribution of the industry sector to the State Gross Domestic Product (SGDP)”, Chakraborty added.

A recent study showed that nearly 41 thousand families are engaged in traditional trade like handloom and handicrafts and sericulture in the state. Over 10 thousand families are engaged in cottage handloom industry, 20 thousand are engaged in handicrafts; reports said 11 thousand families are practicing sericulture, the minister said. He added that 17 thousand 676 families are engaged in tea cultivation in Tripura. 13 thousand 380 of them are serving in the traditional tea gardens and 4,346 are working in small tea gardens.

Efforts are being made to facilitate small scale weavers to catch larger contracts like office tapestries, table clothes etc.

The state currently produces over 7 thousand silk sarees under the trademark of Tripura Silk. The Department of Industries and Commerce would now lay stress on increasing the figure of production.