The pepper farming community has hailed the budget announcement to strengthen the provisions for safeguard duties pertaining to imports, saying that it will help control shipments into the country.

The growing community is awaiting further steps on imports at ₹500 per kg and selling at ₹300 buying at ₹270 from Sri Lanka at the invoice price of ₹500 MIP. This clearly confirms havala and money-laundering and is detrimental to domestic pepper growers, Kishore Shamji of Kishor Spices said.

The reference made to bilateral agreements and FTAs that are detrimental to the domestic industry and farmers by the Finance Minister in the budget speech has given them hopes of earning better revenue. The farming community is looking at necessary steps from the government to stop this menace once and for all, Shamji said.

He pointed out that the presence of smuggled pepper in the consuming markets continues to impact prices, which is evident from the drop of ₹1 per kg in Kochi on Monday in spite of an offtake of 44 tonnes. The prices continue to decline for the last few consecutive days and the drop in the last one week was ₹7 per kg.

The average price realisation for ungarbled varieties was ₹310, while MG1 garbled varieties were quoted at ₹330. New pepper stood at ₹300.

According to Shamji, buyers are holding back because of the price drop even as arrivals have started picking up, including from Wayanad. However, the domestic demand continue to be slow because of the availability of smuggled pepper.

He urged the government to take some measures on a warfooting to strictly monitor such illegal pepper movements through the borders.

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