Flower exports hit by cost and quality

"If Indian manufacturers were to compete in the international market, then improved quality, better packaging, modern breeding and uniform standards should be areas of immediate concern," said Kalyan Chakrabarty of the Bengal Rose Society (BRS).

Israel has been the leader in flower export with around 15 per cent of its earning being generated from flower exports, Sujit Chakrabarty, former president of the Agri Horticulture Society of India (AHSI), pointed out.

High humidity in producing regions like West Bengal push up the cost of growing flowers like roses under controlled conditions conforming to international standards.

Former union minister and president of the BRS, S B Mookherjee, said only the emergence of organised exchanges in the country would encourage planters to produce world class products and attract investments to the flower production sector.

"Major flower exchanges are located in Amsterdam, Singapore but there is not a single one in India. There is an immediate need of one such exchange in the country," he said.

BRS would approach Kolkata Municipal Corporation for a plot near the Victoria Memorial Museum here to set up a giant rose garden.

Chakraborty said only nine private companies, all located around Nasik, Bangalore and Pune, have been able to export flowers on a sustained basis.

More planters should be encouraged to take up modern techniques of production for the upper end of the domestic market, which was growing at a reasonably satisfactory rate, he added.

Indian flowers were yet to be part of the regular flower market in the United States of America, Japan or Singapore, he pointed out.

To encourage rose planters, BRS in association with AHSI would be organising the 23rd All India Rose Convention and Rose Show here. The convention was expected to attract 300 delegates displaying more than thousand of variety of roses.