Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, has called upon the spice exporters to strive to maintain the comparative advantage to sustain the growth in the spice sector.
“The world is moving towards food safety and quality compliant products. Therefore, the farmer community must explore the potential of natural farming methods”, he said, while interacting with representatives of spice farmers and exporters.
The Minister encouraged the spice community to continue maintaining the highest standards in production, processing and value addition so as to make India brand of spices shine globally, which he assured will help the spice growers across the country in better price realisation.
Govt intervention sought
Earlier, the spices exporters highlighted various issues that are hampering the export performance. Cherian Xavier, president of All India Spices Exporters Forum, pointed out that shipments to European Union has come to a standstill over the past year due to pesticide related issues and there is an urgent requirement for government-level intervention with the EU authorities. Other spice importing countries are now demanding Ethylene Oxide Residue (ETO) testing and are setting limits similar to what is set by the EU. The Government should impress upon the incidence of ETO presence due to natural occurrence and cross-contamination and relax the permissible maximum residue limit accordingly, he said.
The association also said that the rise in the cost of containers and increased war insurance premiums have driven the freight rates manifold, making exports unaffordable. The thin margins that the sector is working to retain the market are adversely affected by the unexpected turn of political events, he said, and requested the government to provide freight support to compensate for the losses to some extent.
The association also sought a single window clearance for all export-related activities, to do away with the need to approach various agencies which is a time-consuming process and is expensive.