Andhra Pradesh government is planning to waive loans to the handloom and power loom sectors. Under this scheme, loans worth Rs 110.96 crores will be put off. The loan waiver would be implemented from January 2016. To be implemented at one go, the scheme will benefit 24,209 weavers whose total loans amounted to Rs 82.84 crores. Besides this loans worth Rs 11.83 crores availed of by 674 weaving clusters and Rs 16.27 crores borrowed by 584 power looms would be waived.

Loans against weavers’ credit cards and individual loans up to Rs 1 lakh, weavers’ group loans up to Rs 5 lakh, loans up to Rs 1 lakh availed of by power loom units with a below five HP power connection and availing of the 50 per cent power subsidy scheme will be eligible for the loan waiver under the scheme.

Andhra Pradesh is an important state for handloom. There are about 2,00,310 handloom weavers in the cooperative fold and 1,58,902 outside the cooperative fold. There are about 81,000 power looms working in the state. The handloom industry has the advantage of flexibility of small production quantities, being amenable to innovations, low investment, labour intensive and adaptability to market requirements. India has the world's largest installed base of looms.