The Hindu Business Line : Elections bring no cheer for Paper industry

ELECTION time. Grist for the mills no longer - at least in India. Come elections, paper demand usually spurts. And with elections in more than 70 countries this year, mills are looking forward to heavy orders.

But not in India, where voting has gone electronic taking its toll on the demand for paper.

Industry estimates put the demand for cream wove, the paper used to print ballots, at about 50,000 tonnes. But with the population exercising its franchise through the electronic voting machines this massive order is lost to the paper industry.

However, a fraction of election-time demand for paper, for publicity material, about 7,000-8,000 tonnes continues.

But what the mills lose on the ballot paper they could gain from application forms for equity offers - if the new Government casts its vote for disinvestment.

The application forms including the pages educating prospective investors of the risks and the related paraphernalia that goes into the disinvestment process goes for a lot in paper work.

Consider this: Just the application forms relating to Gail (India) disinvestment alone represented a 500-600 tonne order. Industry representatives estimate that the clutch of Government holdings offloaded in public sector enterprises alone generated a demand for about 2,000 tonnes of paper.

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