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| UP to provide sops to revive Noida flower mandi |
| Virendra Singh Rawat / New Delhi/ Lucknow Sep 16, 2009, 00:43 IST |
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The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to provide sops to revive the Noida flower mandi and create a level playing field to ward off competition from the existing flower mandis in the national capital.
The sops include exemption from mandi fee for one year and transportation subsidy for bringing flowers to mandi for auction and bulk sale.
Since mandi fee is a statutory provision, it would need issuance of a government order (GO) to effect the exemption.
“We are hopeful that the GO would be issued within a week and things would start to look up,” UP Mandi Parishad Rajesh Singh told Business Standard.
All the 70-odd outlets in the Noida flower mandi were successfully auctioned last year, however, the business was yet to take off owing to tough competition from Delhi, where flower trade worth over Rs 100 crore was transacted annually.
The Noida mandi has some disadvantages vis-à-vis Delhi as it is not connected with the railway network so the transportation of flowers from other places is costly.
Singh said that the fee and other levies at the mandi added up to almost 2.5 per cent compared with one per cent in Delhi.
“Besides, when Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh, the best floricultural areas like Bhimtal and Kashipur went to the hill state and now flowers from places are taken to Delhi directly for sale,” he added.
In a recent Mandi Parishad board meeting, it was decided to provide transportation subsidy and exempt Mandi fee for one year on flowers trade, which anyway earned only Rs 1.34 lakh per annum to the exchequer with bulk trade taking place in Mathura and Varanasi. “A new flower mandi is also coming up at Ghazipur in New Delhi adjoining Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh and we must act fast to wrest the business opportunity therein,” Singh said.
The Mandi Parishad would also set up 150-odd outlets for auction and sale of flowers at Noida once the existing ones start to function normally.
The government wants to attract all stakeholders in flower trade, including sellers, buyers, event managers, florists and interior decorators to Noida.
India’s share in the global flower market is below 5 per cent owing to laggard infrastructure, marketing, storage and transportation facilities.
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