MAKING A POINT: Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jairam Ramesh and Union Minister D. Purandhareswari at the Spices Board Meeting in Guntur on Wednesday night.

GUNTUR: Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jairam Ramesh has promised to consider setting up of chilli board at Guntur, separating it from the Spices Board, within two months.

At a meeting of the Spices Board here on Wednesday, he refused to give an assurance immediately to set up the board here as he believed that it would not help farmers. Three MPs from Guntur wanted setting up of chilli board here as 60 per cent of total produce in nine states of the country was grown in Guntur district.

The Ministry of Commerce was considering the proposal and some decision would be taken within two months, he observed. He, however, promised to make the NAFED resort to market intervention every year instead of doing irregularly so that chilli prices were stabilized.

No MSP for chilli

The proposal of including chilli in the list of agriculture products covered under minimum support price was made. The Agriculture Department was in favour of reducing the existing number of products from this list, hence it was not possible to provide MSP for chillies, he said.

The Minister wanted the Spices Board, Agriculture Department and Horticulture Department to jointly work to promote Integrated Pest Management and Organic Farming in chilli. He asked them to take advantage of Rythu Chaitanya yatras to be organised in April.

He also wanted immediate measures to reduce the use of dyes in marking chilli gunnies as it contained carcinogenic Rhodamine-B that prevented exports from India to be accepted. "For improving our exports we need to adopt IPM, organic farming and stop using dyes for making gunnies," he observed.

Bapatla MP Daggubati Purandhareswari, Tenali MP Vallabhaneni Balashourie, and Narsaraopet MP Mekapati Rajamohan were present.

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