What is the issue?
Indian agriculture produce faces more rejections in key export markets compared to products from other developing countries.
What is the status of India’s export market?
- India is among the top 10 WTO members in exports of agriculture commodities.
- The country has a surplus in food product exports, its key export markets include the US, the EU, ASEAN, SAARC countries and West Asia.
- There is a strong commitment from the Government to promote exports of fresh and processed food products, and a strong willingness on part of the exporters and farmers to export.
What are the constrains in India’s food export?
- A majority of seizures for India were raised in the years 2012 and 2013, and these pertained to eggplant, mangoes, snake gourd, bitter gourd and taro (arabi).
- Recently products such as mangoes, table grapes, okra, peanuts, curry leaves, chillies, and tamarind are getting rejected.
- Marine products such as shrimps, prawns, have also faced rejections.
- Due to issues such as presence of higher than approved levels of chemical residues, and pest and bacterial infestation these agricultural products are getting rejected.
- In spite of being a large producer of milk, India is not able to export milk products and ready-to-eat ethnic milk sweets.
- This is due to unhygienic animal rearingconditions and increased chemical feeds.
- The Government don’t have a traceability system for milk and processing conditions par international norms.
What are the impacts of such rejections?
- In the short run, such rejections and bans can led to financial losses.
- In the long run, exporters and farmers can lose market share to exporters from other countries.
- In a globalised world, export control reduces the country’s ranking in ease of doing business.
- There are also severe consequences of these notifications such as destruction of consignment.
What measures needs to be taken?
- Indian export control and export promotion bodies must implement traceability, laboratory testing and other measures to avoid such rejections.
- India needs to implement Good Agriculture Practices and minimise the use of harmful chemicals to meet food safety and health standards.
- India also needs to focus on nutritious diet for its own consumers it will ensure food safety and health standards in the domestic trade.
- India should move away from export control to a more scientific system focusing on food safety and health.
- Such as system can be implemented by FSSAI working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare.
Source: Business Line
