The government in India is considering making it compulsory for paper importers in the country to register before they can receive shipments of the commodity.

In a bid to more carefully record volumes of imports, legislators want to bring the industry in line with the steel sector where traders must declare themselves on the Steel Import Monitoring System before they can import a list of 215 products.

Should such legislation come into effect, importers would be required to provide specific information about the products they are purchasing and submit these details in an online system for imports.

The directorate general of foreign trade within the Commerce Ministry said it is currently looking into the feasibility of such a move.

Indian paper and paperboard imports increased by 16 per cent during the first nine months of this fiscal year, with imports of paper from ASEAN nations growing by 37 per cent, the directorate general of commercial intelligence and statistics said.

The Indian Paper Manufacturers Association has become so concerned by the impact on domestic paper manufacturing that it has called for paper products to be placed on the negative/exclusion list of existing and future free trade agreements.