The rubber industry is concerned over the rising shortage of natural rubber. It wants urgent measures for making available adequate quantity of natural rubber, according to the All India Rubber Industries Association (AIRIA) in an annual meeting held here recently.
The President, Vinod Simon, said until 2010, production of natural rubber matched consumption and during 2010-11 consumption had exceeded production and in the current year the gap had widened further.
The gap between production and consumption of natural rubber during 2010-11 was more than 85,000 tonnes (as per Rubber Board data) and this is likely to widen to one lakh tonnes. The deficit was bound to increase since consumption of rubber by the industry would outpace production, Mr. Simon said. According to Rubber Board data, during 2010-11, production of natural rubber stood at 8.62 lakh tonnes while consumption stood at 9.48 lakh tonnes. During the first five months of the current financial year, production has been 3.11 lakh tonnes while consumption has been 4.02 lakh tonnes.
The industry has requested the Rubber Board to increase the acreage of rubber plantation substantially especially in the North East. Similarly, non-traditional areas should be identified where rubber cultivation could be increased.
Mr. Simon said there was 70 per cent import duty on latex, while it was 20 per cent or Rs. 20 a kg on natural rubber. Surprisingly, he pointed out that latex was a wet form of natural rubber which had about 60 per cent rubber and 40 per cent water. Nearly 900 units and most of them small scale sector use latex for making foam mattresses, surgical and other gloves, balloons and hot water bottles. The high import duty of 70 per cent on latex is making their operations uncompetitive. The import duty on latex needs to be in line with duty on natural rubber.
The Indian Rubber industry consists of micro, small and medium enterprises. Out of 4,500 manufacturers of rubber products, 58 were large scale, 396 medium scale and more than 4,000 (90 per cent) belong to the small scale and tiny sectors. According to AIRIA, the industry played a core sector role in the economy. More than 4.5 lakh people were directly employed in the industry.
