85 consumer items to go off reserved list

Notification taking them out of small scale sector soon.

The government has decided to remove several consumer items from the list of products reserved for the small-scale industry (SSI). The list includes sweetened cashew nut products, shoe polish, wheel chairs, sandalwood oil, hair pins, mechanical razors, gas lighters, adhesive insulating tapes and coffee percolators.

The items have been recommended by the Committee on Dereservation headed by Development Commissioner, SSI, Suresh Chandra, which met earlier this month.

The government will notify the 85 items shortly. Currently, there are 675 items under 22 categories, which are reserved exclusively for manufacture in the SSI sector.

Officials said these items were identified after consultations with the concerned stakeholders.

"While some items like sanitary towels are being removed from the list because the present investment limit of Rs 1 crore is inhibiting quality and technology upgradation, other items such as paper products or essential oils were being removed as these did not require a high level of technology and so there was no threat of these items being manufactured by the large players," an official said.

The committee has also shortlisted 34 items pertaining to the mechanical engineering category. These include manhole covers, weights, GI baths, wheel chairs, lantern parts and bodies, domestic silver and bronze utensils, gate hooks, spectacle hinges, shoe nails (for animals) and poultry equipment.

Under the category of auto components, ancillaries and garage equipment, four items have been identified for dereservation, which include luggage carriers, brake and pedal pads (auto), wiring harness, except integrated wiring harness and auto leaf springs, excluding tapered leaf spring.

The Dereservation Committee also identified three electrical appliances, including egg boilers (up to half a dozen eggs capacity), coffee percolators up to 1.70 litres and black adhesive insulating tapes to be removed from the SSI list.

Dimmers and twilight switches has been shortlisted for dereservation among electrical equipment.

Shoe, wood metal and floor polish have also been included in the dereserved list along with natural essential oils like sandalwood oil, pine, eucalyptus, lemon grass, palm rosa and rosin oil.

Wood products such as tent poles, tea chest plywood and paper products such as waxed paper, paper tubes, gummed tape, blue print paper and bitumenised water proof paper are among the other dereserved products.