Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Oct 26, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Oct 26, 2002 |
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Agri-Biz & Commodities
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Plantations Industry & Economy - Industry Associations Upasi seeks fiscal sops Our Bureau
NEW DELHI, Oct. 25 THE United Planters' Association of Southern India (Upasi) has sought structural and fiscal relief since all major plantation crops — tea, coffee and natural rubber — are ``simultaneously and continuously facing a distress situation''. A UPASI delegation led by its President, Mr P.S. Wallia, met the Union Finance and Company Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, the Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, the Labour Minister, Mr Sahib Singh Verma, and the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Mr Rajiv Pratap Rudy, and the Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, Mr L.V. Saptharishi. Mr Wallia told newsmen that the Finance Minister had expressed concern over the plight of the plantation sector and directed the delegation to give inputs to the Task Force on Taxes headed by Dr Vijay Kelkhar for devising requisite relief measures. Both Mr Jaswant Singh and Mr Fernandes had visited the coffee-growing areas of Karnataka recently to make on-the-spot study, he added. Mr Wallia said the least that could be done was to withdraw the excise duty of Re 1 per kg on tea for South India which would accord relief of Rs 13.8 crore a year to producers. Mr B.B. Medaiah, Vice-President, Upasi, said the plantations remain the only employer on whom statutory compulsion was cast to provide free standard houses to the workers over and above negotiated payment of wages and allowances. A thorough revamping of the entire Plantations Labour Act was in order, he added. They also urged the creation of a special financial institution for financing/refinancing the plantation sector, to be called National Plantation Development Bank (NPDB), akin to Nabard for the farm sector. They demanded reduced import duty on tea bagging machinery, tea vending machines and total exemption of import duty on colour sorters used for enabling upgradation of the tea quality. They also asked the Commerce Ministry to appeal against the Mumbai High Court vacating the ban on the import of natural rubber by advance licence holders. The A.F. Ferguson & Co study on rationalising the tea auction system, submitted six months ago, must be implemented to save the South Indian tea plantation sector, they said. Pleading that plantations be treated either as agriculture or as industry for income tax purposes, they said, ``if it is the former let them be exempted from taxation as in the case of other agri-crops; otherwise let them be taxed at 35 per cent — what industrial giants in the country pay''.
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