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Badal Sanyal

KOLKATA, Nov. 27

DOMESTIC newsprint manufacturers are contemplating to revise prices of newsprint for the January-March, 2003 quarter in conformity with the decision by the `cartel of four' major international newsprint producers, who have announced increase in newsprint prices for the same quarter, on an average, by $50 per tonne.

Confirming this, an executive director of a domestic newsprint manufacturing company, said here on Wednesday that Indian Newsprint Manufacturers Association (INMA), at its meeting in the middle of next month, would ratify the proposed price revision proposal and also finalise the quantum of increase. He indicated that the price increase might be between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000 per tonne.

The executive director said that domestic manufacturers might not be able to earn profit even after the revision of prices because of very high cost of production. However, it was good that local manufacturers would get an opportunity to neutralise some losses with the firming up of international newsprint prices, which hovered around $725 per tonne about two years ago and came down to the level of $400 per tonne a few months back.

He said that domestic newsprint manufacturers, who were lacking technical capability to switch over to production of cream wove varieties of writing and printing paper, would continue to incur losses until the `cartel of four', which contributes to about 60 per cent of total global newsprint production, took prices to the level of $700 per tonne.

It was pointed out that a section of domestic newsprint manufacturers, by virtue of their technical capability, had already shifted production from newsprint to cream varieties of paper, resulting in reduction in the availability of newsprint from domestic sources. It is apprehended that the domestic printing and publishing sector, in the process, would be more dependent on imported newsprint in the years to come.

The ED said about 45 per cent of the estimated demand of about 12 lakh tonnes of newsprint for the current financial year would be met through imported newsprint because the availability from domestic sources might not exceed seven lakh tonnes.

Incidentally, as against some 60 newsprint companies registered under the Companies Act, only about 10, with a combined installed production capacity of about 10 lakhs tonnes per annum, were operating at present in the country.

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