The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Labour-intensive sectors get a boost

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Wednesday, Oct 31, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Labour-intensive sectors get a boost

Special Correspondent

Special package is to be announced to tide over the effect of rupee appreciation

IIT-Kharagpur to make machinery for small growers
Allocation to board to increase to Rs. 750 crore next year

— Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar

A helping hand: Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh (centre), Jeffry Rebello, Chairman of KPA (right) and C.M. Pemmaiah, Vice-President of KPA at the Karnataka Planters’ Association conference in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Bangalore: The Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday said that the Centre is coming out with a special package for labour-intensive sectors of plantation, leather, textiles and handicrafts, to be competitive in the export market and save them from the rupee appreciation.

Speaking to presspersons, the minister said that the rupee appreciation, which was unique to India, was unprecedented and has begun to hurt them.

Mr. Ramesh said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram have supported his proposal. Mr. Manmohan Singh had told him that the labour-intensive sectors should be encouraged. Once the modalities were worked out and approved, he would announce the package, he added.

The minister said that the plantation sector was facing labour shortage due to education and migration among the workers who sought greener pastures in the urban centres. There has been a decline in the flow of labour from Tamil Nadu and Bellary, Gulbarga and Dakshina Kannada districts in the State to the plantations. He said the Coffee Board was taking up mechanisation in a big way.

The board had signed an agreement with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the only IIT to have an agricultural engineering department to help in the manufacture of appropriate farm machinery for small growers. It had already developed the equipment in procuring, picking and weeding, which was affordable.

Increased allocation

Earlier, inaugurating the 49th annual conference of the Karnataka Planters’ Association, the minister said that the allocation for the Coffee Board will be increased to Rs. 750 crore from Rs. 300 crore next year. The Planning Commission will finalise the budget for the board on November 8, he added. The minister said that the Government was not averse to providing social infrastructure to the plantation sector for helping labour.

Mr. Ramesh stressed the importance of increasing domestic consumption, which was 80,000 tonnes now, by 30 per cent.

The Finance Ministry was likely to give some tax concessions to boost the domestic market next year. The export of coffee to Italy was improving and the markets in Russia and Germany should be tapped. The market in the United States was big and should be exploited by introducing value-added coffee, he said. Stressing the need for raising coffee plantations in the non-traditional areas, particularly tribal belts, he said that 60,000 farmers in Vishakhapatnam and Paderu in Andhra Pradesh have taken up coffee cultivation, and are producing 4,000 tonnes of coffee. It is likely to double in the next five years.

The Association Chairman Jeffry Rebello presided over the conference. The Secretary, Vijay Karnad, was present.

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