NO TAKERS FOR CASHEW NUT IN TRIPURA India seeking place in JPMorgan bond indices
Agartala, June 16: Around 5,000 cashew nut growers in Tripura are facing hard times as there are no buyers for their farm produce due to the lockdown.
Even though the harvest season is on, the growers said they are not harvesting the cashew nuts this time.
"The cashew nuts in the fields are rotting and we are not harvesting them because no buyer has approached us for buying so far", said Bhajan Das, a cashew nut grower from Rajnagar village in South Tripura district, 90 km from here.
Tripura has nearly 5,000 listed cashew nut growers, of which 3,000 are from the Rajnagar block. Rajnagar alone has 1,800 hectares of land under cashew nut cultivation.
With lockdown on, most of the growers now want the state government to purchase the nuts from them at a minimum support price.
Pranab Das, another cashew nut grower of the village, said the prices have dropped this year.
"This year no dealer from Kolkata has come to buy our produces. We sold cashew at Rs 120 per kg at wholesale rate.” —PTI
India’s government is working with JPMorgan Chase & Co to potentially include its bonds in the firm's global indexes, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
India is aiming for a 7 per cent weighting in indexes tracked by global investors, one of the people said, without elaborating and asking not to be identified. Details haven't yet been finalised.
Inclusion in global indexes could attract billions of dollars into Indian debt, at a time when public finances are deteriorating.
The country’s economy is set to contract this year for the first time in decades. Moody's Investors Service downgraded the nation's ratings this month to the lowest investment-grade level.
The government in March opened up a wide swathe of its sovereign bond market to overseas investors, taking its biggest step yet to secure access to global indexes. That plan has so far attracted Rs 18,260 crore ($2.4 billion) of inflows.
A 2013 attempt at inclusion into JPMorgan indexes had fizzled out when Indian officials resisted the removal of the cap on foreign ownership.
Representatives for JPMorgan didn't immediately reply to two phone calls and a text message seeking comment.
A finance ministry spokesman couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
The idea of tapping the global debt market more aggressively was floated in September when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in New York. Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Barclays Indices, announced it would help Indian authorities navigate a course to inclusion in international bond benchmarks.
— Bloomberg