Tea, coffee association urge Nath to support plantations

New Delhi, Sep 29 (UNI) Representatives from the United Planters Association of Southern India (UPASI) and the Coffee Exporters Association (CEA) met Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath here today and sought his help for the uplift of the plantation sector in India.

The UPASI urged the minster to increase the subsidy to be given under the proposed Special Purpose Tea Fund (SPTF) to help the growers in undertaking replantation and rejuvenation activities, while the CEA representatives asked him to extend the Vishesh Krishi Upaj Yojana scheme to the coffee industry also.

The SPTF, which is under consideration of the Central Government, envisages replantation and rejuvenation programme at a cost of Rs 4,761 crore spread over 15 years to revive the fortunes of tea industry both in terms of increase in yield as well as improvement in quality.

''Given the magnitude of the cost involved and the resultant crop loss to tea estates in the initial phase of the programme, it may not be worthwhile if there is no adequate incentive to the growers by way of financial support,'' representatives of UPASI told Mr Nath during thier meeting here.

They requested the minister to consider revising the subsidy to 40 per cent under the SPTF as originally envisaged, so that the tea plantations could benefit from the programme.

In a separate meeting with Mr Nath, the CEA representatives noted that the the Krishi Vishesh Upaj Yojana, which was announced in the Foreign Trade Policy for the year 2004-05, was restricted only to a few products and not coffee.

They suggested that the scheme may be made applicable to coffee so as to provide some financial assistance to a large number of farmers as well as to arrest the decline in the production of coffee and increase coffee exports from India.

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