Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, has urged the Indian spices industry to strive to make the spices sector the flag bearers of Indian exports and focus on developing unique Indian spice brands globally.

He was inaugurating the coral jubilee celebrations of the Spices Board through a hybrid meeting.

The Minister congratulated the spices farmers and exporters citing “in these challenging pandemic times, the world took note of the age-old and time-tested practices of Ayurveda that involved the use of spices in medicinal concoctions and our spices farmers and exporters deserve applause for their contributions”.

Goyal formally released the postal stamp to mark the coral jubilee celebrations and also launched the weather-based insurance scheme for small cardamom.

While launching the insurance scheme, the Minister suggested extending similar schemes to crops across India. While emphasizing on the need for ensuring food safety and quality, he called for collective efforts of all the stakeholders to take the goodness of intrinsic Indian spices such as Kashmir Saffron, Naga Chilli, Lakadong Turmeric and UP’s Kalonji to international markets.

The Minister appreciated the Spices Board for its proactive interventions while working with all categories of stakeholders, trade promotion and regulatory bodies of importing countries and inter-governmental organizations which has propelled the Indian spice industry to reach $ 4-billion mark.

Later in a live interaction with spice farmers and exporters, the Mminister assured continuous support of the Government for further development of the sector. 

A G Thankappan, Chairman, Spices Board presided over the function.

D Sathiyan, Secretary, Spices Board pointed out that “the coral years celebration of Spices Board comes at the juncture when spices exports have surpassed $4.18 billion. “I can proudly say that exports of spices have come a long way and have surged to this landmark in 2020-21 from $ 229 million in 1987”.

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