Demand Forecasts for Cultural and Industrial Papers in India: Some Policy Implications

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. Some of the reasons for these variations have been the differences in i) type of association assumed between explanatory and dependent variables, ii) type of data used in the studies, iii) assumed growth rate for the explanatory variables, iv) the number of explanatory variables included in the models, v) subjective judgements of the analysts and users of the results, etc. The last of these has been facilitated by non-availability of adequate or accurate data, and inadequate modelling work such that the demand forecasts have not been approached in a systems framework. The forecasts have not served as appropriate tools for production planning and policy making this may be achieved if adequate and reliable data on consumer profile are collected and processed to enlighten the analysts on how much of different types of paper and paperboards are consumed by different socio-economic groups for different purposes. This may be the best time to generate the data as the nations need not plan for additional production capacity for at least the next 5 years.