With a view to promote the development of natural rubber industry in the Northeast region, the officials of Rubber Board along with the industry body ATMA (Automotive Tyre Manufacturers’ Association) organized a media round table meet in Guwahati on Thursday. The event was attended by Dr. K. N. Raghavan, Executive Director, Rubber Board and Shri Satish Sharma, Chairman of ATMA and President (Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa), Apollo Tyres Ltd. and media persons from various organisations.
Addressing the media meet held in Taj Vivanta, Dr. K. N. Raghavan, Executive Director, Rubber Board said that Rubber Board with financial help from ATMA is implementing a project for developing 200,000 hectares of rubber plantations in the North Eastern states and West Bengal over a period of 5 years. He further added that Rubber Board is taking initiatives in setting up nurseries within the jurisdiction of its field offices in North East, it has 50 field offices in various parts of North East and the under these field offices nurseries will be run by rubber farmers. The Board will provide financial support, seeds and each nursery can produce 80,000 to 1 lakh sapling he added.
Shri Satish Sharma, Chairman of ATMA said that North East region holds immense potential for rubber plantation in view of availability of land and suitable agro climatic conditions. Natural Rubber demand supply gap has been widening in India so ATMA in collaboration with Rubber Board working for production of Natural Rubber in North East, he added.
For the development of natural rubber plantation the project activities are being undertaken in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and West Bengal. At present NE states account for 18% of the production. Tripura is the 2nd largest producer of NR in the country and accounts for 58% of the total rubber produced in NE region. Once the objective of developing plantations in additional 2 lakh ha under the project is achieved, it is estimated that the share pattern will change drastically and share of NE states will increase to 32% of production.
About the Project:
The production of natural rubber in 2021-22 was 7,75,000 metric tonne (MT) whereas the consumption was 12,38,000 MT. Therefore, nearly 40% of the natural rubber requirement is met through imports and the NR demand–supply gap continues to be high since 2012-13 (refer image 1). Out of this, about 73% of the consumption is in the automotive tyre sector with steady increase in the last two decades.
Whereas Kerala accounts for 73% of the total natural rubber production in India, Tripura is the second largest producer with 10% share. Looking at the the immense potential for rubber plantation in NE in view of availability of land and suitable agro climatic conditions, the project was launched in Northeast for developing 2,00,000 hectares of natural rubber plantations in Northeast and West Bengal over a period of five years (2021-26).
The project is being implemented by Rubber Board with financial support from tyre companies in convergence with State/Central Government schemes and technical support of Rubber Board. The state-wise distribution of the target area for plantations and the area planted in the last two financial years is given in Table 1 below:
| TABLE 1: State-wise distribution of targets and progress in the last two years | ||||
| State | Target Area under the project (ha) | Area planted in 2021-22 | Area planted in 2022-23 (till date) | Total |
| Assam | 1,00,000 | 474.52 | 7,420.17 | 7,894.69 |
| Tripura | 30,000 | 2,372.52 | 8,399.00 | 10,771.52 |
| Meghalaya | 21,000 | 292.54 | 2,044.71 | 2,337.25 |
| Arunachal Pradesh | 6,000 | 285.77 | 1,516.44 | 1,802.21 |
| Nagaland | 13,000 | 177.83 | 1,254.33 | 1,432.16 |
| Mizoram | 15,000 | 174.00 | 1,288.60 | 1,462.60 |
| Manipur | 5,000 | 84.50 | 1,028.79 | 1,113.29 |
| West Bengal | 10,000 | – | 129.00 | 129.00 |
| 2,00,000 | 3,861.68 | 23,081.04 | 26,942.72 | |
As can be seen from the Year-wise targets of the project in Table 2 below, the plantation targets are on track:
| TABLE 2: Year-wise target under the project | |
| Year | Target Area (ha) |
| 2021-22 | 5,000 |
| 2022-23 | 25,000 |
| 2023-24 | 50,000 |
| 2024-25 | 60,000 |
| 2025-26 | 60,000 |
| Total | 2,00,000 |
Progress in Assam:
The district-wise distribution of the planted area of 7,894.69 ha in Assam is as below in Table 3:
| TABLE 3: District-wise progress in Assam | |
| Total area planted (ha) | |
| Karbi Anglong | 3901.38 |
| Kokrajhar | 1010.1 |
| Goalpara(Part) | 799.05 |
| Kamrup Metro | 692.88 |
| Kamrup Rural | 604.66 |
| Others | 886.57 |
| Total | 7894.64 |
About Rubber Board & ATMA:
The Rubber Board is a statutory body constituted by the Government of India, under the Rubber Act 1947, for the overall development of the rubber sector in the country.
Automotive Tyre Manufacturers’ Association (ATMA) is a representative body of nine large tyre companies in India accounting for over 95% of tyre production.