Jute mills to move court over textiles ministry report

With the Union textiles ministry scrapping the Tariff Commission (TC)'s report of 2009 on fair price of jute bags, prominent jute mill owners have decided to take the legal recourse to redress their grievances and ensure the implementation of the TC report.

“Some of the top jute mill owners are going to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) soon in the Calcutta High Court against the textiles ministry’s decision to scrap the Tariff Commission’s report of 2009. The jute industry cannot afford to sell B Twill jute bags at prices that prevailed during 2001”, said a top official of Indian Jute Mills Association (Ijma), the apex body of the jute industry.

The textiles ministry, after scrapping the TC report of 2009, is understood to have initiated a fresh study on the fair price of B Twill jute bags. The ministry was not satisfied with the TC report of 2009 and felt that a part of it might have been manipulated or worked out under undue pressure.

Meanwhile, the industry has estimated a loss of around Rs 1100 crore in the past eight years due to non-revision of jute bag prices. At present, the industry's loss on jute sacks is around Rs 4100 per tonne. Though wage and other input costs have gone up by about 254 per cent during the past eight years, there has been no appreciation in the price of jute bags in this period, said an industry source. The Government of India has rejected the jute industry's claim, pointing out that the government purchase price of B-Twill sacks have been duly raised and adjusted along with the rise in wage and other input costs in the industry in the past five years. The TC operates under the Tariff Advisory Council (TAC) as the authorized body to fix a fair and justified price for jute bags based on the input and other market costs for the jute industry.

The present price of jute bags are fixed on the old TC Report of 2001.That report was an extension of the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices (BICP) of 1998. It may be noted that in 2004, the Government had rejected another TC Report. The new TC was set up in 2008 which submitted had its report in June 2009.