The Spices Board will make use of the proposal from the Indian Railways to run a new train to facilitate movement of agro-based products originating from Kerala to different north Indian destinations.
The Thiruvananthapuram division of Southern Railways had mooted the plan to start a train service mainly for the movement of agro-based products in assured transit time for small and medium-scale entrepreneurs and farmers of Kerala to different upcountry marketing centres in North India.
The new train, named as ‘Kairali Queen’, will facilitate a faster and cheaper mode of transport of spices like cardamom, pepper, ginger, turmeric and, nutmeg, besides rubber, cashew, clay and coir products. These products have a very strong market in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Nagpur among others.
Traders of these centres face various challenges in the transport of their merchandise by road in terms of heavy costs of inter-state tax tariffs, road permits, octroi etc.
To make full use of the facility and to assess assured supplies of spices for transport, the board is arranging an interaction with traders, exporters, NGOs, farmer groups and officials of various farm-oriented enterprises.
