Jodhpur is the country's leading centre of the guar gum manufacturing industry. Guar is a rought-resistant crop from which guar gum is extracted for use as thickener, emulsifier and stabilizer in the food, pharmaceutical, textile, paper, oil drilling and other industries.
Shri Ramesh said that in 2005/06, India exported over Rs 1000 crores of guar gum, half of which was to the USA alone. The Union Commerce Ministry is now working towards doubling these exports in the next five years, mainly through the involvement of women's self-help groups (SHGs) in guar cultivation.
This would greatly enhance incomes for farmers as well. About 9 lakh families in Rajasthan and other states like Haryana, Gujarat and Punjab depend on guar cultivation. While complimenting the industry, he stressed the need to promote value-added exports since presently, guar powder alone accounts for 60% of the exports.
The benefits of value-addition should flow directly to farmers and not be cornered by industrialists, Shri Ramesh added.
The Indian Guar Gum Manufacturers Association represented to the Minister of State for Commerce their demand to ban guar seed and guar gum from forward trading. The Association feels that forward trading has created serious problems for exporters and had benefited only speculators.
They said that in the absence of the ban, international buyers are now increasingly diverting their orders to Pakistan. Shri Ramesh assured the Association that he had already taken up the matter with the Forward Markets Commission. The whole idea of forward trading, he said, was to benefit farmers and not traders and speculators.
Press Information Bureau Government of India
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