The Indian Salt Manufacturers Association (ISMA), which organised its first national salt conference in Kutch about two years ago, with participation of international experts from some salt-producing countries, will now host world salt conference in Ahmedabad on January 22 next year.
"We announced this at the ninth world salt symposium held for three days at the Chinese capital of Beijing in the first week of the current month and extended our invitation to delegates from 50 countries who attended the Beijing conference," Hiralal Parakh, Gandhidham-based industrialist and national president of ISMA, who led the Indian delegation, told DNA at Gandhidham on his return.
He said that the natural choice for the meet should have been Kutch as the border district was a major producer of salt in the country. "But, we felt that for such an international conference, the venue should be a bigger one, with better air, train and road connectivity, like Ahmedabad," he said.
Parakh said the Ahmedabad conference would be organised by ISMA in collaboration with the salt department of Union industry ministry and the Gujarat government. He said China's progress in salt production was phenomenal, which should be copied by India, one of the key producers of salt in the world.
"China produced 4 crore tonnes of salt four years ago and now the figure is 7 crore tonnes. This was made possible by consolidating small salt pans into huge ones of up to 20,000 acres and modernising production process." He pointed out that in India, bigger salt pans continued to be of 100 to 200 acres, and production techniques were quite old.
He said while it may not be possible to convert small holdings of salt pans into bigger ones in the country, salt production could be increased by using new technology. He said the Indian salt industry could do better if it got help and encouragement from government.
"For mechanised production, one has to invest Rs15 crore to Rs20 crore. But we cannot avail bank loans as the lease of Kandla Port Trust land, which had been leased to us for past more than two decades, has not been renewed by the Union government."
Parakh also lamented the fact that enough train rakes were not being made available to the industry here for supplying salt to different parts of the country.
