GUNTUR: AT the Tobacco Board’s 142nd board meeting, held at Hyderabad on Wednesday, it was decided to set a target crop size of 130 million kgs for Andhra Pradesh during the 2016-17 crop season as against 120 million kgs fixed during 2015-16.
The Tobacco Board chairman Manoj Kumar Dwivedi took the decision after detailed discussions and taking into consideration the gloomy situation in the world market, carryover stocks, declining demand for tobacco in domestic markets and growers’ demands for assuring remunerative prices for their produce.
It also considered the indents received from the Indian Tobacco Association (ITA). The meeting also elected Balineni Seethaiah, one of the board members, as the vice chairman of Tobacco Board for a period six months from October 2016 to March 2017, as the tenure of the present vice chairman Gadde Seshagiri Rao ends in September 2016.
Tobacco Board members including Guntur MP Jayadev Galla, Lal Singh Vadodia, T Vijay Kumar, D Damodar Reddy, Gadde Seshagiri Rao, Balineni Seethaiah, Gaddamanugu Satyanarayana, C Kiran Kumar,PV Basavarajappa and C Krishna Kumar Mishra were present.
Tobacco Board in-charge executive director CSS Patnaik, director (auctions) Bipin Bihari Choudhury, Indian Tobacco Association President Mittapalli Umamaheswara Rao and others also attended the meeting.