India?s traditional agricultural exports items like tea, coffee and cashew are fast losing their international market share and there is an urgent need to repackage and add value to these products for retaining their market share, an internal report by Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) has said.
The report also said there the country enjoys a ?monopoly situation?? in the export of products like castor oil, guar gum, tobacco, molasses, basmati rice etc and is not likely to face any tough competition in exports of these products in the near future.
Factors such as long delay in clearance, impractical approach to production testing, lack of harmonisation of standards and unreasonable clearance procedure has been identified as adversely impacting exports to the European Union and US.
The report, which was prepared about a month back, specifically said the most developed countries take years to arrive at decision on equivalence on standards and processes with exporting countries. While the US took three years on organic standards, Japan took 20 years for providing market access on mangoes and Australia is yet to take a call on providing marketing access for mangoes even after seven years.
?The European Union (EU) has already taken more than nine years to agree on equivalence in case of egg products,? the Apeda report said. In a recent meeting of the India-EU sanitary and phyto-sanitary & technical barrier to trade joint working group, the government had raised issues like delay in clearance of consignment of flowers, stringent buffalo meat standards, different maximum residue levels (MRLs) for pesticides, drugs, shelf life of edible foods and restriction applied to poultry and pig products.
The report also stated that countries importing India?s agricultural products have been adopting an ?impractical approach? in product testing, particularly while measuring MRLs. ?The sampling procedure for testing is extremely complex and expensive and it is not technically and economically not feasible for the developing countries,? the report stated.
Most of the farms exporting floricultural products in the country have a very stringent pest control management system operational, which is adhered to international standards. The report states despite high-quality procedures prevalent on the exporting farms and very stringent phyto-sanitary inspection procedures, the country?s floricultural produce is being subject to 50% checks at entry points in the Netherlands, one of the largest trading partner in EU. ?This is a time consuming process and results in unwanted delays in clearances, processing and delivery of the consignments to the end clients,? the reports said.
On the issue of traceability of the product to its origin, which has recently been defined by the Codex, the world food standard making body, the report said many countries in the EU have already started demanding traceability in all products, right from the farm level to consumers which is technically and economically not feasible in may developing countries.
India has been consistently maintaining a position that ?traceability? should be considered only as a risk management tool only if no other feasible option to control that risk is available.
The Apeda report also mentions that there are instances of EU countries destroying processed food consignments at their ports due to risk to human health. India has been demanding that the exporting countries must have the option of either take it back to their country or to ship it to another country where it (consignment) was acceptable according to its laws.
According to Apeda, the exports of agri food products during 2007-8 went to up to Rs 28,906 crore against Rs 21,150 crore achieved during the previous year, a sharp rise of more than 40%. However India?s, share in the global trade of agri processed products is only about 1.6 %. Only 15 countries, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Bangladesh and South Africa, account for more than 63% of the country?s export of fruits, vegetables and other agri products.