The members of the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd will be able to supply more quantities of arecanut to the cooperative from next week.

Suresh Bhandary, Managing Director of Campco, told BusinessLine that the cooperative has decided to increase the quantity of white arecanut procured from grower-members from the existing 200 kg per member per month to 500 kg with effect from May 4.

The cooperative had begun procurement at select centres from April 13 amidst lockdown. The procurement limit was then set at 100 kg per member per month. It had set the base price of ₹250 a kg to the new stocks of white arecanut and ₹275 for old stocks.

It decided to increase the quantity of procurement from 100 kg per member per month to 200 kg with effect from April 29. Meanwhile, it also increased the procurement price of the commodity to ₹255 a kg to the new stocks of white arecanut and ₹280 a kg for old stocks with effect from April 27.

Bhandary said 26 branches and 15 sub-centres of the cooperative will procure white arecanut from grower-members in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka and Kasaragod of Kerala from May 4.

All other conditions related to social distancing, the number of members allowed to sell the commodity in a procurement centre in a day, and wearing of masks and other issues related to hygiene will remain the same, he said.

It may be mentioned here that arecanut growers were in a panic after the implementation of lockdown in the country. There were also reports of some private traders buying arecanut at ₹150 a kg during the initial days of lockdown.

However, Campco’s decision to start arecanut procurement from April 13 encouraged other cooperatives to begin the process of procurement. Private traders were also then forced to procure arecanut at the base price of ₹250 a kg that was set by Campco.

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