Demand forecasts for cultural and industrial papers in India: some policy implications

Abstract

Number of integrated pulp and paper mills in India increased from 17 in the early 1950s to 250 in 1985, and the production capacity rose from 137,000 tonnes to 2,350,000 tonnes. The capacity utilization, however, declined continually from 90 per cent during 1951-56 to 58 per cent during 1980-85. This is attributed to a number of factors chief among which are the predominant role of ambitions and presumptions, and lack of distinction between need and demand in the planning process. Besides the official documents, an assessment of the studies to forecast the demand for paper on the basis of i) changes in income, ii) changes in incomes, expenditure on education, index of industrial production, etc., and iii) limited end use surveys; also indicated that there has been one way difference between the demand forecasts and observated consumption levels during 1960-85, and the former were higher than the latter by 7 ato 97 per cent. The variations within the projected demand levels for any year have been even more pronounced.