Red sanders is now free of export restrictions

Context: The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), an agency of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has revised its export policy to permit the export of red sanders if it is obtained from cultivated land.

What necessitated this?

Though a farmer can grow the tree, he/she requires permits to fell and transport the wood, which was difficult to obtain. Moreover, the price of this wood in the domestic market is less than half of what it is in the international market as the demand is low. At the same time, the farmer could not even export it earlier as the foreign trade policy prohibited it.

Estimates suggest that there are more than 3,000 farmers across India who were unable to sell their produce due to the earlier export policy.

Earlier, only seized logs from smugglers were being exported depending on state government rules. This is a great step taken by the DGFT which will benefit red sanders farmers.

About Red sanders:

Red sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus), known for its rich hue and therapeutic properties, is high in demand across Asia, particularly in China and Japan, for use in cosmetics and medicinal products as well as for making furniture, woodcraft and musical instruments.

Its popularity can be gauged from the fact that a tonne of red sanders costs anything between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore in the international market.

Why the restrictions?

The tree is endemic to several districts in Andhra Pradesh and some parts of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. But overexploitation prompted the Union government in the 1980s to recommend inclusion of red sanders in Appendix II of CITES, which says “trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilisation incompatible with their survival”.

The species was listed in Appendix II of CITES in 1995, and subsequently export of red sanders was prohibited in 2004.

In 2010, when the CITES was planning to suspend trade of red sanders obtained from India, the government submitted a Non-Detriment Finding (NDF) report saying it must be allowed to export from cultivated sources.

So in 2012, India got an export quota on red sanders from CITES, under which the country could export 310 tonnes of red sanders obtained from “artificially propagated” sources (grown on farms) and 11,806 tonnes of wood from seized sources.

Sources: down to earth.