UPASI hails move to reduce time window of exports

Government's decision to reduce the time window of exports to six months under the rubber advance license import scheme would help stabilise sagging domestic prices, the United Planters Association of Southern India (UPASI) said today.
In a statement, UPASI Vice-President N Dharmaraj said the association and other grower federations have been requesting for a long-time the need for structural changes in the import policy and were very appreciative of the commerce ministry's considered decision.
Stating that the window of exports was 18 months extendable by six months of two durations, he said this was illogical when it was an established fact that the quality of natural rubber deteriorates after six months.

A long time window makes the monitoring mechanism cumbersome and is not in line with the spirit of the import for re-export cause. All this had added to higher than required import and retention in the domestic market, he said.
A total quantity of four lakh tonnes of rubber was imported duty free into the country in the year 2011 to 2013, forming almost 52 per cent of the imported quantity of rubber into the country during these years, he said.
Moreover a close look at the import data also indicates that import of natural rubber has increased from 77,800 tonnes in 2008-09 to 3,60,300 tonnes in 2013-14, an increase of 207.6 per cent. Such high imports, in volumes much above the gap between production and consumption had depressed domestic prices, he said.

With the same objective in mind, UPASI has also urged the government to review outdated norms of SION (Standard Input Output Norm) and issues of inverted duty structure in Rubber goods industry to enable the robust growth of the Rubber goods manufacturing sector in the country, Dharmaraj said.