Ministries set to float non-tea funds

UPASI MEET

Commerce and finance ministries will soon launch special funds for other commodities in the plantation sector on the lines of the Special Purpose Tea Fund (SPTF).

SPTF is a corpus for replanting and rejuvenating senile tea bushes to be soon launched across the country over an area covering two lakh hectares.

"Apart from launching a programme to replace old planting material for tea, we also plan to launch such a rejuvenation programme for 90,000 hectares of coffee, 70,000 hectares of pepper and over 50,000 hectares of rubber," said Jairam Ramesh, minister of state for commerce.

For pepper, the funding will be jointly done by the National Horticultural Mission and Spices Board in Kerala's Idukki and Wayanad districts, respectively, for a period of over seven years. The corpus is estimated to be around Rs 450 crore and the funding is likely to begin by February next year.

As far as coffee and rubber are concerned, the ministries are working out the financial and technical details, and the quantum of subsidy will be finalised in three months.

"By the first quarter of 2007, we hope to start the replantation activities for all the commodities in the plantation sector," Ramesh said.

Stating that e-auctions could be the most effective mechanism for selling the produce, the minister said plans were on to introduce online auctions for cardamom by the end of this calendar year.