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Good news
for pineapple growers in Tripura. The state is once again
turning into pineapple export hub with at least three
internationally renowned food processing company including very
invincible Dabur Pvt Ltd expressing their interest to purchase
pineapple from Tripura to produce export quality fruit products
from the state.
Government sources here informed
this reporter that Tripura state horticulture corporation is
gearing up to sign a MoU with Dabur Pvt Ltd, Dharmapal Satpal
group of Industries and Northeastern Regional Agricultural
Marketing Company (NERAMAC) to sell raw pineapple at the tune of
71,000 MT per year. Those companies have already set their
target and asked the corporation to supply pineapple through out
the year.
The
agro-climatic conditions in Tripura are ideally suited for
production of "Queen" and "Kew" varieties of pineapple, which
has a large market in Japan and European nations and even in
United States.
NERAMAC has
also set up a modern Pineapple Juice Concentrate Plant at
Nalkata in North Tripura with a processing capacity of about
5,760 TPA but it is operating at a low level due to some
mechanical constraints.
Meanwhile,
Tripura Small Industrial Corporation (TSIC) is also operating a
small Fruit Canning factory, producing fresh canned pineapple
juice and other pineapple products with a processing capacity of
400 TPA.
At present,
Tripura produces 1.06 lakh MT pineapples during summer covering
3,450-hectare area of land, as per official records. In spite
of such a huge production, the farmers are not getting the
desired results as poor infrastructure facilities and the lack
of marketing of pineapple in Tripura has always proved to be
great hindrance.
Of late, the
Ministry of Commerce and Industry had sanctioned the Agri Export
Zone Scheme for the pineapple cultivators of Tripura and in the
entire North East region for ensuring utilization of
horticultural produces. Under this scheme, enhanced
international market access were supposed to be provided to the
farmers besides a necessary infrastructure, flow of credit,
transport assistance and other facilities for promoting
agricultural export through pineapple cultivation but till now
the result of the scheme has not been satisfactory.
With the new
export initiative coming from the private sector it seems a new
lease of life in flowing in to the parched pineapple production
units of Tripura. July
2007
Ratnadeep Choudhury is a
freelance journalist based in Agartala, the capital of
Northeastern India state of Tripura. He can be contacted at
ratnadeepscribe@gmail.com |
