KOLLAM: Ending the year-long worries of the cashew workers across the district, the factories under the Kerala State Cashew Development Corporation is expected to reopen on Wednesday with the first consignment of raw cashew kernels reaching here. The government had earlier approved the lowest bid to purchase 900 tonne of raw cashew from a Thoothukudi-based company from the bids it received on the tender floated recently.
The cashew kernels from Vinayaka Cashews, Thoothukudi, were imported from Guineau Bissau. The Corporation had received fresh tenders for importing cashew from Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast and unlike the routine process of finalising at the corporation level, they were submitted to the government to decide. The government had floated several tenders which elicited virtually no bids after which it eased the terms and conditions for participating, and it has resulted in a better response.
The major among this was to bring down the minimum quantity to be supplied to 500 tonnes from the earlier limit of 2000 tonnes. The small-scale cashew factories have been exempted from revenue recovery procedures and have been given more time for repaying the liability. This was decided at a meeting held in the presence of factory owners and bank representatives earlier. The corporation is facing CBI and vigilance inquiries on the cashew deals it had made with a private firm which resulted in large-scale corruption in the purchase of raw cashew kernels.
