Four leading tyre makers will invest Rs 1,100 crore to increase rubber plantation in West Bengal and the Northeast as part of a five-year project being implemented by the Automotive Tyre Manufacturers' Association (ATMA) in association with the Rubber Board.
Talking to PTI in Guwahati on Friday, Rubber Board executive director, KN Raghavan, said there is a huge demand-supply gap of natural rubber in India and the country is highly dependent on the import of the commodity.
"Against India's consumption of 12.3 lakh tonnes of natural rubber in 2021-22, the domestic production stood at 7.7 lakh tonnes. It is estimated that the demand of natural rubber will grow to 20 lakh tonnes by 2030," he said. The country imported 5.46 lakh tonnes of rubber, mainly from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), resulting in an outgo of Rs 7,500 crore during the last fiscal, Raghavan said.Apollo Tyres, CEAT, JK Tyre and MRF together pledged Rs 1,100 crore over the next five years as a "business investment" to increase rubber plantation in seven states of the region and West Bengal, ATMA chairman Satish Sharma said.
"This is the first of its kind project in the world where the consuming industry is working in collaboration with government agencies to ramp up production of natural rubber to increase availability of this strategic raw material," he added.As part of the project, ATMA plans to develop two lakh hectares of rubber plantation in West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.