Punjab Rice Millers Exporters Association has urged Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal to order a restructuring of the Basmati Export Development Foundation (BEDF), currently governed by the government’s agri export promotion body APEDA, and initiate necessary reforms on priority.

The BEDF has been under limelight ever since it hiked the mandatory contract registration fee by more than 100 per cent last year.

The association in a letter to APEDA in September 2025 had termed the fee hike -- to ₹70/tonne from ₹30/tonne (excluding GST)-- as “unusual increase”, and highly arbitrary which would add huge burden on the trade and demanded its immediate withdrawal. Similar representation was also made by Haryana’s Basmati exporters then. However, the government went ahead with the implementation of the higher fee, which has now again objected to by the Basmati exporters of both the states amid reduced margin and blocked capital after the war in West Asia.

The BEDF was established about 23 years ago to protect and promote Basmati under Geographical Indications (GI) law and to protect the Brand in the world, the Punjab’s exporters’ body alleged that the Foundation was still struggling to uphold its unique position on Basmati.

“Several structural flaws have cropped up in the present BEDF setup and require urgent reforms to bring the focus back on the production and promotion of quality Basmati grain matching the stringent international standards,” said Ashok Sethi, director of the PRMEA.

He further said that the decision for reforms of BEDF was also discussed and accepted by the BEDF Board on several occasions in the past but no action had be taken by APEDA.

Alleging that BEDF lacks vision for the future planning as it requires long-term objectives with comprehensive and detailed projection for exports and domestic markets, the industry body has said that the Foundation needs the most qualified and experienced agriculture experts for minimum five years with knowhow and exposure in production, agro processing, marketing and exports.

“BEDF’s complete review is urgently required by holding wider consultations with all stakeholders including major rice exporters and agro processing units based in Punjab and Haryana,” Sethi said. He has also suggested the government to constitute a “High Power Task Committee” to have detailed discussion with the Basmati exporters.

PRMEA has pointed out that BEDF in its present functioning is too bureaucratic and mostly headed by retired officials on short term contract, which never justify the position. It has requested the government to fix a maximum age limit for the Director of BEDF at 60 years, so that the person holding the position can serve for a long period and execute the long-term plan.

The Association further alleged that though the BEDF has accumulated a large corpus from the contract registration fee for the protection of Basmati GI, it remained elusive in the highly potential countries where Registration has not been done yet.

“It is important that thorough review is conducted to bring about complete overhauling of the BEDF under the present highly volatile situation. We would appreciate your immediate and urgent response for bringing out complete reforms,” the PRMEA said in its letter to Goyal, sent on the Baisakhi day.

India exported 6.07 million tonnes of Basmati rice during April-February of 2025-26 fiscal, same as was in entire 2024-25 fiscal. In value terms the Basmati export was $ 5.27 billion (or Rs 46,403 crore) till February in FY26.

Published on April 20, 2026