Package for coffee growers soon

NEW DELHI: The Centre is likely to hand out a relief package to coffee growers reeling under debt and a fall in export business due to their inability to compete with Vietnamese and Colombian planters. ���The government is sensitive towards the problems of coffee growers. We have worked out a package which hopefully the Cabinet should be clearing soon,��� commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma told reporters, who travelled with him to Nepal and Egypt in the past week.

He said the package would address the problem of indebtedness, particularly of small coffee growers.

Country���s coffee exports plummeted by 22% to 2.4 million bags in the first 11 months of the 2008-09 crop year as the country could not compete with Vietnam and Columbia on the price front.

Also, the plantation sector has structural problems like outdated technology and needs to replant bushes. Growers owe around Rs 400 crore to the banks, mostly in the public sector.

The minister said for the entire plantation sector, the group of ministers (GoM) would look into addressing the structural issues.

India produces about 2.6 lakh tonnes of coffee, 80% of which is exported. The commerce ministry has also written to the finance ministry seeking advice to banks for rescheduling the recovery of the outstanding debt.