The jute industry is set to lose business worth Rs 500 crore this month over its inability to supply 150,000 bales of jute bags for packing food grains.
The shortfall in availability of jute bags is expected to be met by synthetic bags - polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bags.
The industry has already informed the Jute Commissioner Subrata Gupta that it would not be able to supply 150,000 bales of jute bags in January.
According to Manish Poddar, chairman of Indian Jute Mills Association (IJMA), the jute industry does not have the capacity to supply extra orders and backlogs in January 2013. Poddar is understood to have taken the decision after a meeting of the jute industry.
Under Jute Packing Materials Act (JPMA)-1987, each year, the industry supplies jute bags for packing food grains and sugar. In 2012-13, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), decided that packing of sugar and food grains in jute bags be diluted by 60 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.
Poddar’s move is against the official stand of the present and previous state government of West Bengal.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee opposed the CCEA decision and wrote on Facebook that the UPA government at the Centre is, forcing millions of jute farmers and workers to commit suicide.
The state government’s protests have gone non-responded.
Earlier, attempts to use plastic bags replacing jute sacks, were thwarted by Banerjee at CCEA meetings while her Trinamul Congress was part of the ruling coalition at the Centre. The industry also received help from the former Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, an MP from Jangipur in Murshidabad, a large jute growing district.
As per estimates made by the Jute Commissioner, the shortfall in supply of jute bags in January would be around 0.39 million bales. As requested by IJMA, the Commissioner allowed diluting 150,000 lakh bales in favour of synthetic bags.
