Plantation sector R&D to get govt aid

The Union Ministry of Commerce will fund a research programme on the plantation sector at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) in Thiruvananthapuram, Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here.

CDS has mooted a Rs 2-crore research project over a five-year period, which includes PhD fellowships, training, research projects and building research capacities. The research project will be finalised after consultations with commodity boards such as the Tea Board, the Coffee Board and the Cashew Export Promotion Council in a month's time.

The Union minister said the Centre and various financial institutions would pump in close to Rs 8,000 crore in the plantation sector of Kerala across 10 years. Pointing out that almost 80 per cent of all such schemes is garnered by Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Ramesh urged the other states, including Kerala, to come forward and avail the benefits.

Later, at the inauguration of 'Coco Fest 2007' organised by the Coconut Development Board and the Kerala State Department of Agriculture in the state capital, Ramesh said a major portion of the Rs 4,600-crore project outlined by his ministry for the revival of coconut plantations in the country would be sanctioned for Kerala in about 10 years.

About Rs 4000 crore will be spent in Kerala for a re-plantation and rejuvenation exercise in the coconut plantations and will cover around 4 lakh hectares in the state, he added.

Explaining that the crisis in the coconut plantation sector was due to low productivity and old age of crops, he said the replantation schemes would be taken up in a big way in the state. He added that the plan was to replant 25 coconut palms per hectare. Meanwhile, the Kerala government is mulling over exempting coconut and coconut-based products from the purview of value added tax (VAT).