BANGALORE: The Coffee Board which has released Rs 241 crore as ‘Coffee Debt Relief Package - 2010’ for the benefit of small-scale, debtridden coffee growers in the country, has appealed to the Union government to release an additional `58 crore for new claims received under the scheme from 37 banks.According to informed sources, the `241 crore relief package released to banks comprised the Centre’s share of relief after processing claims from 53 banks benefiting as many as 120,025 growers in the country.The banks’ share of debt relief stood at `128.73 crore of which the state government has released `20 crore to meet the bank’s relief share for state cooperatives.Coffee Board Secretary M Chandrashekhar informed Express that so far another 37 banks have preferred new and additional claims for the government’s share of `48.47 crores that would benefit an additional 14,668 growers.Anticipating more claims the Board has appealed for an additional allocation of `58 crore to the Union government.As many as 99 per cent of coffee growers were categorised as small farmers holding less than ten hectares of coffee growing area will benefit from the Coffee Debt Relief Package 2010.The remaining one per cent of growers comprising large growers and corporates own over 70 per cent of the coffee growing area and dose not come under the ambit of the relief package.Chandrashekhar also informed that an impact study on CDRP-2010 was conducted and with the available data from 29 banks it was revealed that 30 per cent of the accounts of small growers have been closed and 50 per cent of the accounts of small growers have been rescheduled.About 50 per cent of the accounts of medium and large growers have been rescheduled.According to CDRP there will be a waiver of 50 per cent of the total liability subject to a maximum benefit of `5 lakh per farmer to be borne by the GoI, an additional 25 per cent by the banks and the balance shall be rescheduled towards pre- 2002 Special Coffee Term Loans (SCTL).It also contained 20 per cent waiver of liability - 10 per cent each from GoI and the banks - subject to a maximum of `1 lakh per farmer towards crop loans.Chandrashekhar, however, predicted a 6.1 per cent increase in crop production, to 322,250 million tonnes (MT) up from the previous year’s output of 302,000 MT.This was due to welldistributed rainfall last year which helped in moisture retention for long periods.DETAILS OF COFFEE EXPORT ■ From April - August 18, 2011, 159,789 tonnes of Indian re-exported coffee, valued at 484.21 million USD; corresponding figure the previous year: 121,441 tonnes ■ Estimated overall liability of coffee growers: `1,200 crore ■ Three coffee producing districts of Karnataka - Kodagu, Chikmagalur and Hassan - expected to show increase in coffee production as compared to the previous year
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