Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, March 29: State government has appealed the Union Finance Ministry to withdraw customs duty on raw cashew nuts (RCN) imposed on this year’s budget as it will impact cashew processors of the state adversely without any benefit to farmers.
This year’s Budget has increased the basic customs duty on cashew nuts in shell to 5 per cent apart from additional duty. This is likely to increase the import cost of cashew processors in the country. While this step is directed to support local cashew farmers, processors are of the opinion that this will not anyway helpful to them.
“In Orissa, there are 300 micro and small cashew processing industries having processing capacity of 1.50 lakh tn of RCN, whereas RCN production is limited to 85,000 tn per year,” a state government communiqué said requesting immediate withdrawal of such duty to save the processing industry.
It also said that cashew farmers are getting highest price for their produce due to heavy local industry demand. “As a scarce agri material, RCN import and levy of duty will not affect the price of local RCN and in no way will be helpful to the farmers. On the contrary, it will affect the industry negatively, if industry is curtailed,” the letter said.
The letter also noted that majority processing units are operating in rural areas and employed around 30,000 SC/ST/OBC, unskilled women workers, and 10,000 other labour force indirectly.
“A large number of young entrepreneurs and start ups have entered in this agro-based food processing industry with a dream of value addition and exports. In this transitional period of industry, imposition of 9.55 per cent of additional duty burden in imported RCN will increase the raw material cost which could not be absorbed in the finished product cycle and will be fatal for the whole processing industry in the state,” the letter said.
