• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• Smartbuy

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

G. Srinivasan

Advertisement

New Delhi, May 17 The non-basmati premium variety rice Ponni, mostly exported from South India to expatriate population, is today in danger of losing the overseas markets, particularly that of Malaysia, where a local trading firm has registered Ponni under the Malaysian Trademark Act and is threatening to serve legal notice on importers of Ponni rice there.

For the beleaguered non-basmati premium rice exporters from the South, this is a double whammy as since April 1, 2008, the Union Government has banned export of non-basmati rice.

Exporters had lost as much as 35,000 tonnes of export order so far this fiscal.

Industry sources told Business Line here that the Malaysian firm Syarikat Faiza SDN.BHD (SFSB), a retail giant trading in commodities, particularly herbal quality rice from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, christened it as the Herbal Ponni rice and sold it under the brand name Taj Mahal, Ponni.

The company claims that in Malaysia, this rice has become synonymous with health because it contains less carbohydrates and starch and is acceptable to people with diabetics or high blood pressure.

The sources said SFSB had recently secured the trademark rights for ‘Ponni’ under Clause 30 of the Malaysian Trademark Act under the general rubric of food which includes rice.

The South Indian suppliers of this rice to Malaysia have been told by their importing firms that since ‘Ponni’ has been registered locally there, they were being proscribed from selling a similar-named imported rice from India from other sources.

They said that the heritage rice from Tamil Nadu should not be lost to the commercial interests of a Malaysian trading company. They point out that the Union Government opposed the registration of the word ‘basmati’ as a trademark in the US and France because it is a unique geographic name to describe rice grown from the Indo-Gangetic plain.

India subsequently objected to the usage of the word to describe the rice product and vehemently voiced its vexation over the registration of the word and fought the legal case to get the registrations annulled.

So any failure to safeguard the interests of the Ponni brand name by India would entail a loss of Rs 400 crore in global markets for this genre of rice even as the growth of Ponni rice exports has been running at 14 per cent a year in the past five years.

Ponni is exported to Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the US, Canada, Japan, the UK, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, besides Malaysia.

They fear that if the Malaysian retail firm is allowed its claim, Indian sale of Ponni not only in Malaysia and elsewhere but also within the country would be in jeopardy, endangering the livelihood security of growers and causing several crores of loss to them.

The sources said that the Tamil Nadu Government, always ready to uphold the cultural tradition of Tamils, should take up the matter with the Union Government to fight the case in Malaysia and wrest the brand name Ponni sui generis to Tamil Nadu.

Trade policy analysts said that earlier, the Department of Commerce notified a variety of basmati rice — Super — developed by Pakistan, which is contested and is pending for settlement in the apex court.

Now, with another row over Ponni, the export promotion agency involved has failed to assess potential threats from commercial interests transcending borders.

They say the authorities should brace up to register Ponni rice as Certification of Trade Mark or Geographical Indication, outline the standard for Ponni rice and accord a separate harmonised code for exports so that unexpected onslaught on India’s traditional products from commercial interests is effectively faced down.

More Stories on : Rice | IPR | Exports & Imports

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
‘Invest more on training, right hiring’

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line