Industry body CEPCI urges govt to curb illegal import of cashew kernels

The Cashew Export Promotion Council of India Tuesday urged the government to curb illegal import of cashew kernels that has led to closure of over 50 per cent of domestic factories resulting in a loss of about six lakh jobs.

The industry body has urged the government to blacklist fraudulent importers and invoke the COFEPOSA (Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act) against repeated offenders.

The import of cashew kernels to India should be subject to 100 per cent inspection by the customs for sampling and testing, it demanded.

The Cashew Export Promotion Council of India (CEPCI) has made a representation in this regard to the commerce ministry as well as the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs.

CEPCI Chairman R K Bhoodes said a large volume of 'plain cashew kernels' (mostly broken) is being imported from competing countries, such as Vietnam, Mozambique and Ivory Coast, by misusing the duty exemption under various free-trade agreements (FTAs).

These countries have recently started processing the products that are inferior in quality compared to Indian products. Also, these countries do not have a domestic market to sell their broken cashew kernels and are disposing of at a throw away price, he claimed.

Bhoodes further said, "Some of the Indian processors have opened their processing units in these countries. They also push these low-quality kernels into the Indian market in these fraudulent ways."
Expressing concern over the sharp surge in illegal imports of cashew kernels in India, the CEPCI chairman said, "When such low-quality and low-priced broken kernels are dumped in the Indian domestic market evading customs duty, genuine processors in India find it extremely difficult to sell their products and the domestic market prices have declined to such a low level that domestic processing is unviable in India."