Panchthar, Sept 6: Ginger farmers and businessmen of eastern hilly districts are a worried lot at the moment after their produced was limited to store house, as India stopped importing the ginger for the past one week.
It is the main season to sell ginger. Farmers and businessmen of Panchthar, Ilam, Taplejung and Terhathum districts have been hit hard as a result.
Businessmen said that the Indian side stopped buying Nepali ginger, citing the harmful pesticide was found on the Chinese ginger exported to India via Nepal.
Urging the bodies concerned to ease the ginger export, a businessman Chandra Basnet said, “It has been one month that we bought ginger from farmers. The ginger has now started to rot.”
The farmers and businessmen are concerned over huge financial loss they will have to incur worth millions of rupees due to the unwarranted move by the Indian side. Mostly, the Nepali ginger is sold in Indian markets like Naxalbari, Siliguri and Bangalore. According to the Agriculture Development Office, ginger farming is carried out in more than 3,770 hectare land in Panchthar, Taplejung, Ilam and Jhapa districts and 55,040 metric tonnes of ginger is produced annually. RSS
