The Hindu Business Line : Small tea growers seek special finance scheme

THE Nilgiris Small Tea Growers Association has appealed to the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, to instruct banks to implement the Special Tea Finance Scheme throughout the country.

Mr M. Bhojarajan, the President of the association, told Business Line that even though it was two months since the scheme was announced and banks had shown interest to implement it in the North, they were hesitant to do so in the South. "We have told the Finance Minister that the small scale industry in the Nilgiris is the worst hit," he said.

"We had made several rounds of representations with the Indian Banks Association (IBA) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and based on this, the Government announced the special finance for the tea industry. Now, the banks are not at all entertaining the provisions of the scheme," he told the Finance Minister in his memorandum.

The scheme has many useful provisions including a moratorium on repayment, rescheduling of the loans, extension of the repayment period and reduction of interest.

In another memorandum, the Association has appealed to the Finance Minister to extend the benefit of exemption of excise duty for the small-scale factories when presenting the Union Budget.

"The bought leaf factories - the small-scale tea factories in the private sector - are now enjoying an exemption from the excise duty in recognition of the extremely poor returns fetched by them. It is imperative that this benefit is duly renewed so that there is no suffering for this sector", Mr Bhojarajan said.