The makers of nitrile gloves are meeting the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) on Wednesday urging them to intervene as the market is being flooded by poor quality glove dumping.
The glove market witnessed growth spurts during Covid with the country seeing emergence of domestic players.
“Producing nitrile gloves in India is a testament to our nation’s growing manufacturing prowess and we are proud that we are contributing to make our country Atmanirbhar adopting Prime Minister’s vision of Make in India. The health ministry, commerce & industry ministry, and BIS have always held high standards and been supportive of the Make in India initiative by passing anti dumping rules and regulating quality,” said Anindith Reddy, MD-Wadi Surgicals (Enliva).
Glove makers say that items from countries like Thailand, Malaysia and China are being dumped in India under different non-medical HSN codes.
“Those gloves don’t meet Indian standards. The Indian requirement is slightly thicker gloves and there are certain parameters which the glove makers have to follow. However, the importers are now trying to convince the government to change the standards to make it easy for them to import and dump sub-standard gloves into the country,” said another glove maker.He said the manufacturers of this nascent segment, which emerged during Covid, have no issue in manufacturing it according to the standards specified by the BIS and have urged the government not to bring down the standards.”However if they reduce the quality of the gloves, bulk dumping of those gloves made in other countries will start as there is no duty on import. India will get cheap quality gloves, rejected gloves. These are brought in containers as non-medical citing reasons that they will be used in fisheries, housekeeping, cleaning but once they are cleared by Customs they are being repacked and supplied into the healthcare,” added the person.
The glove manufacturers have been demanding a complete ban on import of loose bulk gloves.
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