Shillong, Nov 08: The number of Registered manufacturing units in Meghalaya declined from 45 in 1974 to 31 in 2000 before touching 69 in 1998, according to a socio-economic review published by the state government. The review attributed the reason of stagnancy in manufacturing in the state, mostly dealing in forest produce, to a ban imposed by the supreme court on the use of woods.

In 1974, there were 45 manufacturing industrial units registered with the state chief inspector of factories, with 2943 workers. The number dropped to 35 in 1981 with workers figure increasing to 3075.


The number of registered units slowly increased to 56 in 1985 and again to 69 in 1998. But the workers' figure decreased from 3689 to 3079 during that period, the review published by the directorate of economics and statistics said. The years 2000 and 2001 again showed the registered industrial units dropped down to more than its half to 31 and "this is mainly due to the fact that most of these forest based industrial units had to be closed down in view of the ban," it said.

In addition, some of those industrial units had stopped functioning and few were excluded from the purview of the factories act 1984 which, it said, is not in force in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and Lakshadweep. Bureau Report