ITC signs MoU with AP govt

The company proposes to utilise this forestry produce as a raw material for its paper board manufacturing plant.

The company will also work in partnership with Velugu, a World Bank-aided project of the state government, to synergize the strengths of two organisations. ITC chairman Y Deveshwar and B Gopalakrishna Reddy, the minister for SSI, signed the MoU.

The ITC chairman said that their group had been so far utilising private wasteland for the social forestry projects.

The Indian paper industry is suffering from higher power costs and lower availability of raw materials, i.e fibre.

"Today, because of our waste land cultivation on contract farming basis, we do not face any shortage of raw materials and about 1.4 lakh farmers are getting employed. This has also helped us in getting a leadership position in the paper boards industry with a 40 per cent market share while our immediate next competitor has only five to six per cent marketshare," he said.

ITC's Farm Forestry programme was initiated in 1992-93. Under this programme farmers are encouraged to create plantations on their surplus lands and wastelands, using high-yielding disease-resistant clonal planting stock, suitable for the paper and pulp industry.

These saplings for clonal plantations are developed by ITC's own biotechnology research centre, and are supplied to the farmers at subsidised rates.

So far, ITC has reached out to nearly 6,000 farmers covering 17,500 hectares. ITC had earlier founded eChoupal initiative with an intention to build capacity of the poorest of the farmer and make him a consumer, Deveshwar said.