Cumulative employment rose to 1.94 crore in FY25 as against 1.3 crore in FY14
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SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) on Monday said that it has achieved an all-time high sales of over ₹1.7 lakh crore during fiscal year 2024-25.

The Commission has not given corresponding figures for the last fiscal. A written reply from Minister of State in the MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises), Shobha Karandlaje stated sales was over ₹1.56 lakh crore in FY24. This means that sales grew over 9.5 per cent in FY25. Production rose to around ₹1.17 lakh crore as against ₹1.08 lakh crore (as reported in a response in Parliament), showing a growth of over 8 per cent. Production figure has also scaled a new high.

Manoj Kumar, Chairman of KVIC, said production surged four times in FY25 as against over ₹26,000 crore in FY14. During this period, sales increased nearly five-fold from over ₹31,000 crore in FY14. Khadi production and sales recorded 366 per cent and 561 per cent growth, respectively. PM Narendra Modi’s regular promotion of khadi may have also boosted production and sales.

Performance in the last 11 years also showed that cumulative employment rose to 1.94 crore in FY25 as against 1.3 crore in FY14– a 49 per cent growth. Since the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Employment Generation Program (PMEGP) scheme, over 10 lakh units have been established. For these units, government announced subsidy of over ₹27,000 crore against a loan of over ₹73000 crore. So far, over 90 lakh people are getting employment through PMEGP, said Kumar.

He said, in the last 10 years out of over 7.43 lakh trainees, over 4.27 lakh (over 57 per cent) are women. Further, 80 per cent of the 5 lakh khadi artisans are also women. In the last 11 years, “the wages of khadi artisans have shot up by 275 per cent while in the last three years, it has been hiked by 100 per cent,” he said.

Published on April 21, 2025