There is significant improvement in the installed capacity and production of paper and paper board in the country. Table 23.11 presents the trend in the installed capacity and production of paper and paper board since 1950-51 onward exhibiting about 47 and 33 times growth between 1950-51 and 200 05. The country is almost self-sufficient in respect common variety of paper and paper board.
The industry which grew at the rate of 6.1 percent in the year 1995-96 witnessed a slump in the year 1996-97 when the growth rate of the industry came down to 2.2 per cent. It witnessed a growth rate of 5.53 per cent and 6.67 per cent in the years 1997-98 and 1998- 99 respectively which denotes significant recovery.
Table 23.Ill exhibits the installed capacity, production, demand and trade of paper in country. A look at the table shows that whereas: the capacity, production, demand and export have shown positive trend the import has declined significantly. Source: Hindu Survey of Indian Industry, 1998.
The per capita consumption of paper and paper board in India is very low. It is only 2 kg as against 273 kg in USA, 196 kg in Sweden, 191 kg in Canada and 145 kg in Japan. The demand of paper and paperboard is estimated to be around 54.80 lakh tones in 2005-06 on the basis of growth rate of 6.5 per cent for the period from 2000-01 to 2005-06.
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Newsprint
Until 1981, the National Newsprint and Paper Mills at Nepanagar (capacity: 75,000 tons) was the only unit in the country manufacturing newsprint. In the wake of economic liberalisation, the newsprint sector was thrown open to the private sector from April 1994. Since then 36 mills mostly in the small scale sector, have developed the capacity to manufacture and market newsprint.
Public sector companies like NEPA, Hindustan Newsprint Ltd., Mysore Paper Mills and Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Paper Mills are the major players in the newsprint sector, with about 60 per cent of the total market. In the private sector, Rama Newsprint & Papers is the latest and largest.
The present installed capacity of the newsprint industry is about 13 lakh tons. The total production of newsprint in 2004-05 was 6.80 lakh tons against the country’s total demand of 12.70 lakh tons. Hence half of the country’s demand of newsprint is met through import. Infect due to reduced import duty and slump in international market foreign newsprint is cheaper than indigenous one.
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The dumping of newsprint through import has adversely affected the indigenous industry and some of the mills are reaching the stage of bankruptcy and closure. This has also led to decline in the indigenous production.
Trade
Indigenous production of paper and paperboard is not sufficient enough to meet the home demand. Although there has been significant improvement in the production of paper as a result of which the quantity of import has declined but the country has to still import specialty paper like cable insulation paper, vegetable parchment papers, currency printing paper, duplicating stencil-based tissue, condenser tissue, ivory board etc from abroad. During 1988-89 India imported Rs. 303.41 crores worth of paper and paperboard which increased to Rs. 456.04 in 1990- 91 and Rs. 1,455 crores in 2004-05. Bulk of this import comes from Sweden, Canada, Japan, U.K., France, Belgium and U.S.A. Besides it also imported Rs. 2,136 crores worth of wood pulp and scrape paper in 2004-05 (cf Rs. 259.64 crores in 1988-89) mostly from Canada, Sweden, and Norway etc.
India also exports some quantity of printing and writing paper, craft and paperboard, packing and wrapping paper to the countries of the South West Asia, East Africa and South East Asia. During 1988-89 the total value of such export was Rs. 11.63 crores which rose to Rs. 1,216 crores in 2002-03.
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Newsprint is mainly imported from Canada, Finland, Russia, U.S.A., Norway, Sweden, Romania, New Zealand etc. During 1996-97 the total import was 5.47 lakh tons which fell down to 4.98 lakh tons in 1997-98. Import of this magnitude has adversely affected the viability of many indigenous newsprint units.