$2.17m Grant Boost For Cane Farmers
The grant of more than $2.17 million by the Indian Government for the mechanisation of sugarcane farms will no doubt benefit cane farmers.
The Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama assured this yesterday as he received a cheque of $2,172,576.35 from the Indian High Commissioner to Fiji, Vishvas Sapkal for the interim sourcing of agriculture equipment from India, mainly for the cane fields.
In receiving the grant, Mr Bainimarama thanked the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian Government for their continued assistance especially in the field of agriculture.
“All these machines we are going to purchase out of this grant will no doubt assist our farmers and not only make things easy for them but cut down the cost of operations,” Mr Bainimarama said.
“I want to thank the Prime Minister of India, Mr Modi for his continued assistance.” The Permanent Secretary to the Office of the Prime Minister, Yogesh Karan said the machineries will be capitalised soon before the planting season ended.
The machines will be Indian made considering the after sales service maintenance of the equipment.
“The general guideline is already there from the Indian High Commission and we will make the purchase very soon, because we want to capitalise on these equipment before the planting season,” Mr Karan said. He said one of the biggest problems facing the sugar industry over the years was the poor mechanisation and at the same time labour shortage.
Through the Government initiative last year, 20 mechanical harvesters were purchased and come new season, Mr Karan said the Government will also be purchasing tractors for the cooperatives.
“As we see the demand and supply we could consider more harvesters in years to come but this year Government will also be providing assistance to co-operatives for the purchase of tractors,” Mr Karan said. He said this was considering the fact that sugar industry in other countries was heavily mechanised while Fiji was very much
outdated, “perhaps behind in 50 years”. Meanwhile Mr Sapkal said Fiji and India shared a great bond and India will continue to support Fiji.
Mr Sapkal said the Indian gave a lot of importance to the development of the agriculture and therefore the grant was given.
Rail road update
At the same time, through the assistance from the Indian Government, an Indian company has been identified to study the Fijian rail system.
Mr Karan said this was done to analyse what needed to be done to improve the rail system.And for this the Sugar Ministry has requested meetings with the Indian authorities which will take place as early as next year.
“The whole idea is to fix up the rail as much as possible before the new crashing seasons,” Mr Karan said.
He said the cost has been accounted for and the work needed to done, if not then a lot would be spent of trucks and other mediums of transporting canes to the mills from farms which would be expensive. In the last crushing season, the Government had subsidised the cane transportation from farms to mills.