About 60% of potato crop has been damaged due to cold weather and frost in Punjab. This comes at a time when the state government had obtained necessary clearances from private firms and was all set to export potato to South Asian nations, Europe and Gulf.
Capt Kanwaljit Singh, cooperation minister, Punjab told FE here on Sunday that the Punjab government would compensate the growers suitably. Immense loss has been caused to other crops like tomato and peas too.
The minister disclosed that while the loss to potato crop was about 60%, the loss to peas and tomato was about 40 to 50%. The damage to crops would also mean drop in Value Added Tax, as major portion of it comes from agriculture in Punjab. In addition, the government would need huge funds to compensate farmers for the loss due to cold weather. In Punjab total area under potato crop is estimated at around 75,000 hectare. The total potato production which was estimated to be around 15.00 lakh metric tonne, is expected to be not more than 7.00 lakh MT. The main areas that have been worst affected are Bathinda, Jalandhar, Kapurth ala, Hoshiarpur and Amritsar.
It is learnt that Punjab had targeted to supply around 10,000 metric tonne of potato to Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Sri Lanka and Maldives this year. The Punjab State Cooperative Supply as well as Marketing Federation (Markfed) had been appointed nodal agencies for agri export. sources said that Markfed, was to bring about 8,000 acre crop area under EureGAP certification in Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Nawanshahr districts. Besides, it was to set up 2,500 metric tonne capacity multi-utility pack house cum cold storage at Dhandari Kalan and Ludhiana.