Rubber, cardamom, cashew, coconut secured FTA

Kochi, Apr 21: Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh today reiterated that the import duty for rubber, cardamom, cashew and coconut would not be reduced in the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Addressing a gathering at a Marketfed Seminar on agriculture here, he said these commodities were in the negative list and the import duty for them would not be reduced in the proposed agreement to be finalised in th near future.

He said the import duty for cardamom and coconut was at 70 per cent, cashew 30 per cent and rubber 25 per cent.

The Minister said negotiations were on to reduce the import duty for pepper, coffee and black tea in the FTA.

Pepper had an import duty of 70 per cent and the present negotiating offer was to reduce it to 50 per cent by 2018, he added.

In case of coffee and black tea, the Centre was trying to reduce the import duty to 50 per cent from the current 100 per cent by 2018 in the agreement.

The Minister said last year was good for the plantation sector with substantial increase in spices, tea and coffee exports.

While spices export increased by 44 per cent from 480 million dollars in 2005-06 to 600 million dollars this year, tea exports rose from 385 million dollars to 450 million dollars.

The coffee export was 430 million dollars as against 350 million dollars last year.

Referring to a demand to provide minimum representative prices to plantation crops in Kerala, Mr Ramesh said the real challenge was to increase productivity and attributed the reason for low productivity to age of the plantation.

The minister said if the state started a replantation programme, the farmers would get minimum remunerative prices for their products with increase in productivity.

UNI