|
World Cashew Congress begins
Ajayan
Kochi: The three-day World Cashew Congress began here on Friday. The first-ever international buyer-seller meet is being organised by the Cashew Export Promotion Council of India (CEPCI). According to CEPCI chairman P Gangadharan Pillai, the meet has over 400 delegates and 140 of them are from abroad. The business session of the buyer-seller meet is to begin on Saturday and would discuss the problems facing the raw nut producers, processors and exporters. Different emerging trends in production, marketing and global consumption of the nut would be analysed and efforts would be taken to promote export of the nut, he said. Mr Pillai said the council would take the initiatives to increase exports to traditional areas, find new markets, and enhance the exports of value-added products which presently had a mere five per cent share of the total exports. He added that exports were likely to be 10-15 per cent lesser this fiscal owing to the comparatively higher unit price last year on account of crop failure inBrazil. The area under crop cultivation had been dropping in Kerala and it was necessary to arrest this, he said.With the prices falling, the meet should help farmers find a way out and make efforts to get a reasonable price for their commodity, he said. The meet would also look into infrastructure development like helping exporters construct drying yards and warehouses and enhance storage life of raw nuts. The congress is being held in the backdrop of new entrants into the cashew kernel export market and India's share of 65 per cent in the global kernel trade facing a threat. Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
|
