Comments
Kochi, April 1
Four leading seafood exporters have approached the Kerala High Court challenging the selection criteria of beneficiaries under the PLI scheme for the seafood sector by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries.
It is submitted before the court that by fixing the PLI application eligibility criteria at a minimum annual turnover of ₹600 crore per annum, only a handful of exporters are eligible for getting the ₹994 crore allotted to the seafood sector. Value-added seafood exporters are totally ignored in the eligibility criteria and excluding the vast majority of operators is arbitrary and unreasonable, the petitioners said.
Admitting the petition, the court directed the Solicitor General to file a reply on behalf of the Central Government.
The petitioners have challenged the PLI scheme on the ground that the eligibility criteria was arbitrarily fixed to distribute government largesse to a handful of entities, while keeping out the vast majority of eligible exporters. No distinction was made between existing exports under India brands and bulk exports under foreign labels, they said.
The segment turnover in marine products was arbitrarily changed to turnover of all food products to squeeze ineligible entries, the petitioners said.
The petitioners have also sought to set aside the selection of eligible applicants, call for fresh applications, to conduct the selection after relying on a sales turnover of only “marine segment” and after fixing an appropriate lower sales turnover as the eligible criteria.
The Central Government had approved the PLI scheme for giving incentives to select manufacturing exporters to support India brands in international markets. The total outlay under the scheme is ₹10,900 crore to be released over six years. Marine products are one such segment and the minimum eligibility criteria are fixed at ₹600 crore turnover for 2019-20.
The petitioners also submitted that Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI) had represented repeatedly before the Ministry to make the scheme more inclusive and the zone selection wider. The processors/exporters who only pack under foreign labels have been preferred over the genuine exporters who export under their own label. The criteria of selection which is removed from the main intention of the scheme has made the selection arbitrary, they said.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.