| There are 18 small-scale jute twine manufacturing units in Andhra Pradesh with an installed capacity of 267 tonnes a day. Three years ago, they used to produce around 80,000 tonnes of jute twine and sell the produce in the markets of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. |
| The price of 50 kg of jute twine/yarn which was over Rs 950 last year has fallen to Rs 900, and the mills are worried that the large scale imports would further reduce the price. |
| The convener of the Andhra Pradesh Mesta Twine Mills Association , G Chinna Venkata Raju, told Business Standard that over the last two years, imports from Nepal and Bangladesh, which were negligible earlier, had increased significantly. |
| With lower operating costs, the mills abroad are exporting huge quantities of jute twine to India. Internal taxes and levies are also nominal in Nepal. |
| Often, jute twine is routed to India in large quantities through clandestine routes via Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Around 70 truck loads of jute are reportedly being imported from Nepal alone. |
| The association president said that imports from Nepal were not carrying any markings to reveal the country of origin. This was facilitating the use of their products in the Indian food industry, which should use indigenously produced jute bags only. |
| Andhra Pradesh had earlier taken up the issue of dumping from Nepal and Bangladesh with the Ministry of Textiles which was yet to act on the issue, he said. |
| Explaining the adverse impact on the agro-based labour-intensive mills in Andhra Pradesh, Venkata Raju said that even jute farmers were bearing the brunt of the cascading effect. Two years ago, the farmers used to get up to Rs 11 a kg of raw jute from the mills. |
| Instead of going up, the purchase price had fallen to Rs 6 a kg now. This had discouraged the farmers who were shifting to other crops on a large scale, he said. |
| The production of raw material by farmers used to be around 28 lakh manugus (manugu = 37.5 kg). The association fears that the production during the current season would not be more than 15 lakh manugus. |
| The AP Mesta Twine Mills Association demanded that anti-dumping duty be imposed on the imports of jute twine/yarn from Nepal. A quota should be fixed for such imports. |
| There is a proposal for lifting 16 per cent duty on imports from Bangladesh under the Free Trade Agreement. Should the government accept the proposal, it would sound death-knell for small-scale Indian mills here, the association stated in a representation to the state and the central government. |
| A representation had been made to the government to lay a special addition duty of four per cent, besides a countervailing duty of one per cent on the jute twine imports, Venkata Raju said. |
| ""If these measures are not practical, then the government should consider the plea of the mills for supporting measures which would enable them to offer competitive prices as compared with those offered by the mills in the neighbouring countries," Venkata Raju said. |
| Citing the example of the West Bengal government which had waived off 25 per cent of electric bill dues for the sick units in the sector and offers power at subsidised rates, the association pleaded that these be implemented in Andhra Pradesh as well. |
| The power tariff applied for ferro alloy industries at Rs 2.12 a unit should also be extended to mesta/jute twine mills, it said. At present, the mills have to pay over Rs 4 a unit. |
| The jute batching oil supplied by HPCL to the Andhra Pradesh jute/mesta twine mills also shot up to Rs 2.38 lakh for 12,000 litres from Rs 1.4 lakh two years ago. A 16 per cent duty is also levied on such sales to these mills. The mills have for long been asking for waiver of such duty. |
| The mills in Andhra Pradesh have also to pay a purchase tax of four per cent on raw mesta purchases. The association urged that the purchase tax be reduced to two per cent. |
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