According to a recent piece of news, the government’s apex export promotion body APEDA plans to revamp and improve the NPOP Standards. It is soon planning to ease procedures to ensure increased participation of small and medium farmers.
Before we dive further into the news, it becomes important here to educate our readers on the meaning of APEDA and NPOP so that it becomes easy for them to understand and relate to the news.
What is APEDA?
APEDA is the general abbreviation for the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority. The Government of India instituted APEDA in December 1985 under the APEDA Act. Besides performing various other functions, the statutory body is responsible for promoting Indian exports of scheduled agricultural and processed food products. Some examples of these scheduled products include, but are not limited to, sugar and sugar-related products, organic and processed fruits & vegetables, pulses, cereals, juices, groundnuts, milled products, oil meals, meat & poultry, and guar gum.
Any individual or entity interested in starting an agricultural and processed food products export business in India must mandatorily obtain an APEDA registration.
What is NPOP
To provide a single-minded and well-directed approach for developing high-quality organic agricultural and other products. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry launched the NPOP (National Programme for Organic Production) in 2000 under the aegis of the GOI. NPOP was officially notified under the Foreign Trade & Development Act in October 2001. As per DGFT notifications, any agricultural product exported as organic needs to be accompanied by an organic certificate issued by a recognized and certified agency.
The scope of NPOP is vast. It includes drafting policies for developing and certifying organic products and national standards for such products and processes. It also involves accrediting programs to be run by certification and inspection agencies. Moreover, it also deals with the certification of organic food products.
Scope Categories for NPOP Certification
The NPOP certification is available for the scope categories mentioned below:
- Apiculture
- Aquaculture
- Organic Mushroom
- Livestock, Sericulture
- Crop production and wild harvest
- Organic Food Processing and Handling
- Organic Animal Feed Processing and Handling
- Seaweeds, Aquatic Plants, and GreenHouse Crop Production
APEDA plans to revamp and improve NPOP Standards
Coming back to the news. The steps to revamp and improve NPOP standards, combined with a focus on natural selection of Geographical Indication (GI) merchandise, can go a long way in assisting India to increase further its exports of natural products, which grew by a commendable 51% to reach USD 1.04 billion throughout FY 2021.
According to M Angamuthu, the APEDA chairman, it is crucial to revamp and improve NPOP standards to ensure better promotion and outreach. Besides, he also mentioned that revising and easing procedural guidelines will help ensure increased participation and better response from farmers. He further added that GI merchandise such as Darjeeling Tea and Arakku Espresso Coffee, which are anyways sold at a premium compared to regular tea and Espresso coffee, can fetch more money if licensed as natural and organic.
Moreover, you require any kind of guidance related to the APEDA Registration, please feel free to contact our business advisors at 8881-069-069.
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