Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Feb 08, 2007
ePaper
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Feb 08, 2007 ePaper |
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Agri-Biz & Commodities
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Agricultural Institutions Apeda heading for restructuring G. Srinivasan
Seeing reasons Agency unable to help exporters as its staff strength has been more or less stable since its inception. Need to whittle down the multiplicity of tasks undertaken by Apeda.
Highly-placed sources in the Government told Business Line here that a few months ago, the Commerce Secretary, Mr Gopal K. Pillai, had asked Apeda to come out with a restructuring plan as in the extant structure. Apeda has been dealing with as many as thousand products — both agriculture and processed. The mandate to Apeda was to identify a list of products, develop strategies for those products and the markets by reconstituting the officials currently in charge of multiplicity of products to head the focussed products and markets for ensuring effective results.
Manifold Tasks
Apeda became the sole facilitator and regulator for farm and processed products exports over the years in the absence of monitoring on the part of other Central agencies such as the National Horticulture Board, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Processing. Agricultural exports have gone up from Rs 9212.87 crore in 2000-01 to Rs 17,918 crore in 2005-06. But the Agency's apparent inability to help exporters could be gauged from the fact that its staff strength remained constant — a total of 22 posts in the higher echelons of administration from 21 at the time Apeda was set up in 1986-87 — even as Apeda had brought under its fold various tasks according to leading farm and processed food exporters.
Lap-up attempts
There are also overt attempts by the Ministry of Food Processing to lap up the Apeda in its fold, while the Department of Commerce is unwilling to shed this important export item from its portfolio, the sources said. They said Apeda was not only an export facilitating agency for farm products but was also the nodal agency for dishing out quality/food safety systems and certification of exportable produce. This is compounded by weak post-harvest infrastructure, inadequate extension support at the farmer level and inadequate quality and hygiene control mechanism and the complex and cumbersome export procedures. Apparently disturbed by the obstacles to farm products and processed food exports, an inter-ministerial committee at the behest of the PMO suggested early last year the multi-channel export routes for perishable farm produce through the formation of nodal agencies, provision for multiple choices of certifying authorities for carrying out certification, reduction in the number of agencies and rationalisation of documentation through a single export document that could reduce 215 data elements and 25 current documents redundant.
Pending Bill
If these were operationalised, the multiplicity of works currently being done by Apeda would be vastly whittled down, leaving it as a facilitating body for agriculture and processed food exports, leading exporters say. Interestingly, a bill is pending for introduction in Parliament to give the role of regulatory agency through an amendment in Apeda Act. Meanwhile, the sources said that the Apeda Chairman, Mr K.S. Money, has made a presentation on Monday to the Commerce Secretary's review of activities of Apeda.
More Stories on : Agricultural Institutions | Restructuring
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