The Hindu Business Line : ‘High import duties hurting rubber products sector’

With the country emerging a hub for the automobile industry — every car needs over 28 kg of rubber products apart from the tyres — investment in rubber component units is set to grow.

Our Bureau

Chennai, Feb. 19 Inadequate availability of rubber and high import duties are constraints that affect growth and investments in rubber products industry, according to the All India Rubber Industries Association.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, the association’s Senior Vice-President, Mr T.K. Mukherjee, said that the association, which represents over 1,200 manufacturers in the non-tyre rubber product segment, is pushing for a reduction in import duty on natural rubber and lifting of anti-dumping duty on specific grades of synthetic rubber.

It believes that the domestic production of about 8.5-lakh tonnes natural rubber and less than 1-lakh tonne of synthetic rubber was inadequate to meet the manufacturing needs.

The manufacturing of rubber products is on the rise with the increased buoyancy in the manufacturing sector. With the country emerging a hub for the automobile industry — every car needs over 28 kg of rubber products apart from the tyres — investments in rubber component manufacturing are set to grow. But raw material availability is a problem.

According to Mr K.T. Thomas, the association nominee on the Rubber Board, imports now come at a high cost — import duty on natural rubber is 20 per cent and on latex 70 per cent — but if these were reduced the demand for natural rubber would grow to over a million tonnes.

The industry needs over 3 lakh tonnes of synthetic rubber, most of which is now being imported, he said. But the Government levies an anti-dumping duty on specific grades of rubber even if the domestic availability is less than a third of what is needed.

Mr Mukherjee said, typically, manufacturers use a blend of 75 per cent natural rubber and 25 per cent synthetic rubber, depending on prices. Rubber products can now be imported at lower duties than raw material rubber. This encourages import of finished goods over import of raw materials that would support domestic manufacturing and employment generation.

Meetings organised

The AIRIA, in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry is organising the ‘India Rubber Expo 2009’ in January-February in Kolkata, to showcase the industry’s products. Simultaneously, a conference on rubber technology will be organised in association with IIT-Kharagpur and a buyer-seller meet in association with CAPEXIL.

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