Export award for Pala Coop Society

Kottayam, May 7

The Pala Marketing Cooperative Society Ltd has won the honour of being the biggest rubber exporting agency in the country. In recognition of the role played by the society, the Rubber Board has decided to present the “Excellence in Export Award” at an international meeting to be held as part of the golden jubilee celebrations at Kochi on May 9. This is the second achievement of the Pala Society, the first being Dr Punjab Rao Deshmukh Award instituted by Nationa l Cooperative Agricultural Marketing Federation, said the soceity President, Prof K.K.Abraham.

Courtesy: hindubusinessline

Dear friends please Visit the export details submitted for the month of August 2006 (A pdf file) which is the quality for award. This page received under RTI Act 2005 from PIO of Rubber Board attested by Market research officer, Market promotion department.

The month wise  export analysis 2006-07 is under progress and updating shortly.

Courtesy: Economic times

I started to to use the facility for a public chat option with an user name keralafarmer.

The latest Informations from Indian Rubber Statistics up to 31st January 2008 are as follows.

• Production - 723575
• Consumption - 713580
• Import - 79179
• Export - 32163
• Sold by Farmers - 689565
• Purchase by manufacturers - 641668
• Missing - 6924
  
• Month end Stock - 227465

The details in depth are the solid evidences of self sufficiency on Rubber production in India.

PRODUCTION (in Tonnes)

Ribbed Smoked Sheets (RSS) :: 525670

Solid Block Rubber :: 82385

Latex Concentrate (drc) :: 70390

Pale Latex Crapes :: 1475

Others :: 43655

TOTAL :: 723575

CONSUMPTION

Ribbed Smoked Sheets (RSS) :: 479885

Solid Block Rubber :: 129560

Latex Concentrate (drc) :: 63090

Pale Latex Crapes :: 1975

Others :: 39070

TOTAL :: 713580

Total means that the sum is calculated from monthly statistics. RB represents the updated details published in March 2008.

For more details visit the pdf file of monthly rubber statistics for the month of January 2008 by Indian Rubber Board (Published on March 2008).

Tyre makers want Customs duty cut on natural rubber

Our Bureau

Mumbai, April 22 The Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association (ATMA) has urged the Government to reduce the custom duty on natural rubber imports to 7.5 per cent from 20 per cent.

Mr Rajiv Budhiraja, Director-General, ATMA, said: “With the custom duty on tyres at 10 per cent and on natural rubber at 20 per cent, a serious situation of inverted duty structure has obtained whereby the duty on raw material (natural rubber) is significantly higher than the duty on the finished product (tyres). The situation contravenes the current policy of the Government to encourage value addition through indigenous production of finished products.”

Drawing a comparison with cotton, Mr Budhiraja said natural rubber and cotton had striking similarities — in that both are the key industrial raw materials for manufacture of finished products and grown in a few States. Like in the case of cotton, natural rubber accounts for a substantial percentage of raw material cost of finished product and deserves similar import duty cuts.

According to ATMA, natural rubber, in fact, deserves more sympathetic and urgent consideration as the existing Custom duty on natural rubber is 20 per cent as against the 10 per cent custom duty on cotton. The Government is exploring possibilities of reducing import duty on cotton from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.

As per ATMA estimates, there has been a 5 per cent increase in consumption of natural rubber while the production has dropped by 3 per cent in 2007-08 over the previous year. In order to meet the shortfall and avoid stock out situation affecting tyre production, 100,000 tonnes of natural rubber on adhoc basis needs to be allowed for import without any import duty, says the tyre body.

In its recent interactions with the Ministry of Commerce, ATMA has stated that peak customs duty on non-agriculture goods has progressively reduced from 50 per cent in 1996-97 to 10 per cent in 2007-08, while the custom duty on natural rubber continues to be retained at 1996-97 level of 20 per cent.

The progressive reduction in custom duty on tyres has led to a consistent increase in import and dumping of finished products, the association said.

Courtesy: Thehindubusinessline

The Statistics available now do not show the real picture for the year 2007-08 for want of import and month end balance stock of March 2008 figures. There are exports at price rate below market price. Why the tyre manufacturers are not against the low priced export? Maximum import are under 0% duty which is calculated on percentage of the export of finished products. All these games are against farmers. India is self sufficient in Rubber production according to consumption. Unwanted export and import are for an economic loss to both State and central Govts. The sale of rubber by growers for the year 2006-07 was 821290 Tonnes and purchase by manufacturers was 751096 Tonnes. Import up to December 2007 was 69852 Tonnes. The under mentioned data is as per your own figures.

The Domestic price of rubber was far below than International and now approximately equal to began Import to increase surplus stock in India.

Mr. Sathish and Dr. Bhuwanachandran - Both are scientists from Indian Rubber Board to collect soil-samples from my Rubber Estate. They collected well water and five soil samples from different locations 0n 17-04-08.

The test results of soil sample shows the pH from 5.8 to 6.2 after the acidic rain in summer. The pH of well water shows 5.4 which is more acidic than soil.

Few search results are available like changing the pH of your soil , Soil pH & Liming , Soil pH ,  Surface  Soil pH etc.

Net users in the city and in Kerala are discovering and exploring the potential of free software

Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar

Freedom Free software is economically viable and gives the user the freedom to adapt the code to his needs

Chandrasekharan Nair, a Peyad-based planter, turned to cyber space to express his angst against what he perceived as farmer-unfriendly policies. Gradually, he also began to include tips on farming in general and rubber cultivation in particular. keralafarmer.wordpress.com is the blog published by Chadrasekharan, affectionately called ‘Chandrettan.’ And his posts are all in Malayalam.

Local cyber content

Chandrettan is not alone. There are more net users like him in Kerala who are gravitating towards locally generated cyber content and Malayalam language computing.

kannur.web4all.in. is another example of such a portal. It is a web portal of Kannur district that gives voice to the panchayats and various projects in the district. “Locally generated content in Malayalam is fast catching up in Kerala where there is the right atmosphere and potential for dissemination of information and employment of technology,” says Ashiq of the Swatantra Malayalam Computing Community, which is developing and refining the technology to make Malayalam a user-friendly language in day-to-day computing. Visit http://gghssmalappuram.in/ and all doubts will be cleared. It is a website in Malayalam and English of a school by the same name.

This increase in accessibility has been made possible by the booming viability of free software. Not for long can Kerala remain insular to the revolution of free software ignited by Richard Stallman with his ‘right to read.’

GNU Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and free and open source software such as OpenOffice have started posing a serious challenge to proprietary giants. The ideology of free software can be explored more easily by encountering the people using and popularising it.

Yet another organisation that is at the forefront of using cyber space for local content is the non-profit organisation Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE). For four years, SPACE has been promoting free software and encouraging local participation in using new technology. SPACE works to popularise Linux and is the workhorse behind many Goverment projects such as IT @ School.

Vimal Joseph of SPACE says: “In Kerala’s context the economic viability of using proprietary software is beyond question. The dollar-to-Rupee conversion rate makes proprietary software a financial question. Such software also seriously curtails flexibility and freedom of the user. Free software, on the other hand, is economically viable and gives the user the freedom to adapt the code to his needs.”

Adds Dineshan M, a teacher associated with IT @ School: “A teacher should impart value to his students. Discouraging the use of pirated copies of expensive software and promoting GNU/Linux comes naturally to me as a teacher.”

The Kerala Government syllabus for IT is modelled on the use of free software.

Many students in the city are also rallying around the Linux bandwagon. Rajiv Nair, a final-year student of engineering, has scripted a code that detects his bluetooth phone and when he (his phone) is away, instructs the computer to standby automatically. Rajiv has mastered the operating system and is confident of tweaking it to his needs.

The Linux user group in the city has many more innovative users like him who are ready to help out new users.

Anoop John, who runs a computer sales and services shop in the city remarks: “The barrier that remains is the mindset barrier. People traditionally grow up with a kind of software on their desktops. People have now started discovering and exploring the possibilities of Linux.”

Anoop worked abroad for three years as a software developer before returning to India to set up his own business.

The time is ripe for computer enthusiasts to try such alternative computing environments. A google search of ilug-tvm (Indian Linux Users Group – Trivandrum) leads us to www.ilug-tvm.org and any help needed is at hand.

VISHNU MENON M

Courtesy & Copy right @ thehindu.com

I have received 360 pages of information from the PIO Rubber Board in response to my request under RTI Act.

On compilation of the data furnished, I have found that they have not furnished complete information requested for. I am taking up the matter again with the Board.

On scrutiny of some of the documents I have found out an interesting episode which I am publishing here for the Public.

During the month of August 2006 Pala Marketing Co-operative Society Ltd, Pala exported to various Countries a quantity of 893000 Kilograms of RSS 4 for Rs. 1902375.00 only. This would mean that average export price per Kg of RSS 4 came only to Rs. 2.13, which is unbelievable because the Domestic Market Price (Kottayam) for August 2006 was around Rs. 91.82 for RSS 4.

Similarly in the same month this Society exported 300000 Kgs of ISNR (item not specified) at an average price of Rs. 2.06 per Kg only which is also unbelievable because of the market price of Rs. 88.28 for ISNR 20.

Both pages of Pala Marketing Co-Operative Society as pdf file.

I am surprised to note that the statement of Pala Socy as said above was verified and endorsed to me as such by the PIO Rubber Board.

As per Co-operative Societies Act what ever profit is earned by them, a share goes to the Public exchequer. In this case, how and why the Society exported huge quantity of rubber incurring heavy loss is under suspicion . Rubber Board (sole authority for the management of Rubber Exports) also seems to have passed on this issue with out any remarks. I am taking up this matter also separately.

As per the monthly figure of Rubber exports published by the Board for April 2006, total exports was 5989000 Kgs, whereas, as per the information furnished to me under RTI Act the export of Rubber for the
the month of April 2006 came to 6004241 Kgs. This shows that the information provided to me is incomplete or wrong and without verification or due respect to the RTI Act. In view of this discrepancy I have not compiled the rest of the 360 pages of information provided to me. I am taking up this matter also with the PIO Rubber Board.

I had sent Rs. 700 + to the PIO for this information and it was in response to their letter stating that the information would cover 350 pages. In fact I have received so many duplicate pages, covering letters of exporters, and pages containing no relevant information adding up to the 350 pages.

In so many cases, many pages of information are missing though the available page clearly indicate the existence of other pages.

Further action is possible only after receiving wanting data from the PIO Rubber Board.

In third session -’Narration of success stories/ Sharing of experiences’

Moderator Shri R.Heli, Former Director of Agriculture

 ‘Narration of Success Stories’

The presentations are as follows:-

• Kerala Rubber Statistics (ppt)
• Rubber Statistics from April 96 to March 07 (ppt)
• 2006 April to March 08 (A pdf presentation in Malayalam with a deep study)
• World Rubber Statistics from 1870 to 2006 (ppt)

1. Findings from my experiments and experiences are sharing to the public through Internet facility and free software. Many of IT professionals including  internet users  have not  attempted to change over from the softwares of Microsoft to the Freely available ones like GNU/Linux, Ubuntu etc. I have been successfully using these software without any problems.

2. The analysis done by me of Indian Rubber Statistics published by the Indian Rubber Board in my blogs are unique.  Such type of analysis have not been attempted by anybody so far. I feel that this analysis has resulted in sustaining the International Market price of Rubber. Many research students all over India are utilizing these published analytical figures for their research papers. Eg. Sandeep Yadav a MBA student from Gujarat  and his Mobile No. 9879329132, Email: ersky@rediffmail.com

3. Brown bast disease; remedial measures found out from my experiments and experiences. Ref: in Kairali people channel presented by NTV, as blog post etc.

4. I have developed my own system of drying agricultural produces with minimum expenditure and time.  The page I published is available in this post.

I am thankful to Govt. of Kerala and the WTOCell Kerala (Special Thanks to Special Officer A.Srija) for giving a valuable chance to present the reality in front of the experts from Agricultural Sector.