Menon, who was Spices Board director (marketing), is likely to oversee the formation of the International Spice Community (ISC) in the near future.There are about a hundred spices and they will be brought under the ISC umbrella in phased manner, Menon told The Financial Express.

Menon said that there is also a possibility of including major buying countries as the member countries to the ISC. The modalities of the rules and the framework are yet to be decided. There would not be any restriction on membership. But the status of different members will vary. For example, if the US, which is one of the largest importers of spices, chooses to become a member, it will have a greater status than other countries.

Opening up membership to buying countries will help the producing countries in channelisingtheir production according to the needs of the buying countries.

Global marketing is the new focus area of IPC, said Menon. His immediate assignments would be to initiate proceedings on the two important committees formed during the last IPC meeting in October 1998, at Bali. One committee will look after the global marketing while the other will look into the quality aspects prevalent in the industry world wide.

On quality, which has been IPC's focus area, Menon said talks are initiated between health authorities and the trading houses of importing and exporting countries for achievable and acceptable quality parameters.

According to Menon, importing countries might specify standards which may not be practically achievable by the spice producing and processing countries. These differences have to be sorted out at a common table with mutually accepted norms. Pest-control and fungus-control are some of the major areas where quality-standards have to be standardised.

For the marketing drive, IPC intendsto find new markets for spices, pushing up the gusto in the growing markets and popularise new vistas of uses in stagnant markets. Medicinal uses of spices, popular in India, under the Ayurveda treatment is one of the most promising aspects, said Menon. Other areas of application are using spice extracts as flavouring and colouring agent. With the global trend for using natural products, synthetic colours and flavours are on their way out, said Menon.

IPC has provided a good production outlook for pepper for 1998 and 1999. This year the crop is estimated to be 1.89 lakh tonnes while for 1999, the crop would produce 2.5 lakh tonnes of pepper. According to Menon, the trend of prices in the futures contracts look a little down because of increased production, but he expects the prices to stabilise soon.

Menon, who has put in about 34 years in the spices industry, is only the second Indian to be appointed to the IPC since its inception in 1972. The previous chairman of IPC was S M Acharya, joint secretary,in the Commerce Ministry to the Government of India. IPC is right now headed by an Indonesian, Hattanto.

Menon was associated with the Spices Export Promotion Council earlier before the Spices Board was formed. He has seen the industry through some drastic changes. There is a whopping increase in the export of spices as whole and over 30 per cent increase in value addition over the last ten years, said Menon. Creating quality consciousness among the growers and exporters is one of Spices Board's major achievements, apart from being a major forex earner, he said.