Punjab Government on Monday decided to do away with the practice of Change of land Use (ClU) certificate required for setting up honey processing units in the State.
A decision to this effect was taken by Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today in a meeting with the delegation of Progressive Beekeeper’s Association led by its President Simranjeet Singh.
The Chief Minister directed the Financial Commissioner, Excise & Taxation to immediately issue a notification in this regard to promote bee-keeping as allied farming profession to further supplement the income of the farmers.
Badal also assured the association that he would soon take up the issue of seeking exemption from Income Tax (IT) for the farmers engaged in allied farming activities like bee-keeping and mushroom cultivation with the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the pattern of IT exemption already applicable in agriculture.
Badal said to exempt these farmers from IT would give a further fillip to adopt allied activities of farming like apiary and mushroom cultivation to promote the concept of diversification of agriculture, which was the need of the hour.
He said that it was all the more important and relevant since the margins of profit from traditional farming had already been squeezed due to ever widening gap between the high cost of inputs and low returns in terms of Minimum Support Price (MSP).
Meanwhile, MD Markfed apprised the Chief Minister that the Markfed had already set up a state-of-the-art honey processing unit-cum-hi-tech quality testing laboratory in Jalandhar at a cost of `40 crore, which would provide the latest facilities to the honey producers from the state for processing and quality testing especially required for marketing their produce both in domestic and international market.