Indian planters demand scraping of several levies imposed on tea plantations

KOCHI: The United Planters’ Association of Southern India (Upasi) has demanded the government to scrap or ease several levies imposed on tea plantations to save the sector that supports some 3.65 lakh workers and 70,000 small growers in south India alone.

The demand was raised on November 19 at a meeting of the association members from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala in Coimbatore in the backdrop of a slump in tea prices. The meeting also demanded the appointment of a full-time chairman for the Tea Board.

This year’s bumper tea production in Kenya has depressed prices in the international market and local producers are facing the heat – when the prices have fallen, cost of production has gone up.

Upasi has sought the scrapping of plantation tax of Rs 700 per hectare and land tax of Rs 500 per hectare, besides a reduction in the lease rentals of Rs 1,300 per hectare levied in Kerala. If the taxes cannot be done away with, a moratorium of at least three years should be imposed, the stakeholders said.

The meeting also demanded scaling down of value-added tax for the estate sector to 1 per cent from 5 per cent in Tamil Nadu and abolition of agriculture income tax in Kerala and Karnataka. The conference wanted a legislation brought in by the Kerala government allowing estate owners to use 5 per cent of their land for non-plantation activities to be given sanction immediately by the president and extend similar policies to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, according to an Upasi press release. The conference expressed concerns over the absence of a full-time chairman for the Tea Board and urged the Centre to appoint a full-time chairman for the body and reconstitute the Board by including representatives of the producers’ associations.

Concessional power tariff and unification of 24 Central and state enactments, governing the industry, were some of the other demands made at the meeting.