North Kashmir Fruit growers worried due to heavy Transportation Charges,Cost Of Paper,Cardboard, Wooden Boxes & Tax rates

Baramulla: 17 Sep: North Kashmir Fruit growers are very much worried as the rates of apples were remaining very high during initial stage of the season but this year that hasn’t happened

Abdul Rashid, a grower from Baramulla said that during the early stage of the season, the demand of the apples was high but this year the market is down by around 40 percent.

The duty levied by the Bangladesh government on Kashmiri apple is huge,” he said. “Being the biggest export market of Kashmiri apple, the duty hike has started bleeding the growers.”

“Growers are suffering losses as labour rate, transportation charges, cost of paper, cardboard and wooden boxes are touching sky but rates are down due to which growers aren’t even fetching the amount that they have spent on it in the ongoing year,”Also Goverment Should Implement MIS Scheme So that Grower Can take benefit of this scheme,he also said that the horticulture industry is going to collapse in Kashmir if the government would not intervene to many Problems as this industry is facing many challenges.

He said that import of fruit from Iran has lowered the demand of Kashmir apple and the land under horticulture is increasing with each passing year and production is also increasing but with low demand.

He said that the government must again purchase apples from growers through market intervention schemes so that growers can fetch good rates too as per the quality of the fruit.The charges of fertilizers, pesticides, labour, package, transport and other things are currently more than what growers are getting despite spending their full year in their orchards,” he said.

Another Grower told ANN NEWS that the market is down by almost thirty percent and growers are very much worried.

He said that the main challenge is that fruit isn’t reaching on time in the market as fruit laden trucks are allowed towards Jammu for just two to three hours on Srinagar-Jammu national highway

Fruit Growers appealed to Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to intervene into the matter