News - Aid for avian flu diagnostic lab upgrade

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products' Export Development Authority (APEDA) has offered financial support to the Namakkal-based poultry exporters to upgrade the animal disease laboratory to handle avian disease diagnosis.

APEDA could extend financial support up to Rs 50 lakh to upgrade an existing lab so as to facilitate setting up a disease certification facility within the Namakkal poultry region itself. It also suggested that such funding would be possible if the existing animal disease lab of the Government veterinary college in Namakkal is upgraded.

The APEDA Chairman, K.S. Money, conveyed this to the members of the poultry exporters at a meeting held in Namakkal under the aegis of the All India Poultry Products Exporters Association (APPEA). The APPEA members in their first national meet on poultry products' exports had pleaded for speedy release of the APEDA-routed freight subsidy for the poultry shipments as the table egg shippers are constrained over the `inordinate' delay in its realisation.

The egg exporters also wanted the five per cent export incentive for poultry products under the Vishesh Krishi Upaj Yogana from 2005-06 to be given with retrospective effect from 2004-05 fiscal, the year when the Yogana was introduced, as was given to the cashew exporters. Read more Finance news.

The APEDA Chairman has offered to expedite the release of the freight subsidy for the table egg exporters by way of simplifying the documentation and also upgrading the APEDA's in-house facility currently handling the processing of the subsidy claims. The President of the APPEA, K. Singaraj, and the advisor to APPEA, Dr P. Selvaraj, made a presentation on the current status of the poultry industry and its growth and export potential to the APEDA Chairman.

Being a key table egg exporting centre in the country, egg exports from Namakkal zone account for 80 per cent of the 3.5 million eggs being exported daily from the country. APPEA had urged APEDA to initiate measures to declare the region as "the special export processing zone for poultry".

Responding to this, Money said APEDA would also facilitate taking up the matter.

Money also assured APEDA would take up the egg exporters request to increase the DEPB scheme benefit from one per cent to five per cent of the f.o.b value.

Aid for avian flu diagnostic lab upgrade - Sify.com