Spices Board draws up spice export target from India for 2009-10.

KOLKATA: The Spices Board has drawn up the spice export target from India for 2009-10. Anticipating no immediate revival in demand in recession-hit countries, especially western nations, it has lowered the spice export target for the current year at 4.35 lakh tonne, 7.5% less than the actual export of 4.7 lakh tonne in 2008-09.

With this, India’s forex earnings from spices export are estimated to drop 15% to Rs 4,500 crore (or around $1,000 million at the current exchange rate) in FY’09 as compared to Rs 5,300.25 crore ($1,025 million) in FY’08.

The indication of falling exports is already in the air. Taking the hit of squeezing orders for India’s major traditional export items like pepper, chilli, vanilla, mint products, spice oils and oleoresins, spice exports from India fell 10.5% in value term and 22.5% in volumes during the first two months of 2009-10 on a year-on-year basis.

According to the Spices Board, a total quantity of 82,435 tonne of spices valuing Rs 824.7 crore ($167.4 million) were exported from the country during April-May ‘09 as against 106,375 tonne a year ago, which in rupee terms valued at Rs 921 crore and $224 million in dollar term.

In the first two months, India has exported 3,000 tonne of pepper (Rs 47.5 crore) as against 5,580 tonne (Rs 92 crore) last year. Pepper export to the US, India’s major buyer, has declined to 950 tonne from about 2,000 tonne about a year ago. Chilli export fell drastically from 50,275 tonne (Rs 242.1 crore) to 26,000 tonne (Rs 159.7 crore), mainly due to the absence of buying by Pakistan, which imported 20,000 tonne of chilli from India during April-May ‘08.

Spice exports in value and volumes would have slipped further during the period, had there not been a sudden surge in demand for Indian turmeric, coriander seed, nutmeg and mace from foreign buyers. During the period, turmeric export went up 17% in volumes to 10,500 tonne and by 52% in value term to Rs 64.5 crore as compared to respective figures in April-May’08.

Coriander seed export has also increased from 7,575 tonne (Rs 46 crore) to 9,250 tonne (Rs 47.5 crore) while combined exports of nutmeg and mace increased from 65 tonne (Rs 2 crore) to 450 tonne (Rs.11.4 crore) during the period.


Source : The Economic Times