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| Edited By: Nandini Goswami |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 29, 2018, 06:40 AM IST
The union commerce ministry will soon come up with a fiscal package for the plantation sector. It will also provide a debt relief package to some plantation crops, including coffee.
“The government is very serious of addressing the problems of indebtedness of the plantation sector. A note has been sent to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) and we will come out with a package shortly,” Jyotiraditya Scindia, union minister of state for commerce and industry, said.
The ministry had asked an empowered group of ministers (GoM) to look into the structural issues of the plantation sector (tea, coffee, spices, coconut, rubber). The package would particularly address small and medium plantation growers.
The union commerce ministry is also considering a social package for the tea industry. “Social costs in the tea industry are a major issue. The government is considering the matter seriously and we would come up with a package for the industry shortly,” Scindia said.
Social cost includes all basic amenities which are provided to labourers by the plantation owners. The cost of production of tea in India is highest in the world, says a study by the Indian Tea Association, the body for leading tea planters in India. Most of the cost is attributed by the high welfare cost, which includes concessional value of foodgrains supply to tea estate workers.
DNA Money on October 2, 009 had said that the ministry was actively looking into the issue of sharing of social costs.
Aditya Khaitan, chairman of the Indian Tea Association, said, “Welfare costs work out to more than Rs 7 per kg of made tea and these costs are not there in most competing tea nations. We have asked the union government and state government to share this cost along with the industry.”
This would be in addition to the Rs 600 crore allotted this year through the Tea Board under Special Purpose Tea Fund (SPTF) for re-plantations and rejuvenation in tea gardens, Khaitan said. The SPTF was announced in 2005, under which federal government would give a Rs 4200-crore grant to the tea industry over a period of 15 years. The minister said that the tea industry should strive to improve the quality of the tea produced and focus should be on exporting the orthodox variety of tea. “The real market for export in the tea sector lies in the orthodox variety, and we mainly export CTC variety. We should look to reorganise our tea export basket,” he said.
