The Union Finance Ministry will soon take up the proposed Rs 1000 crore cluster development project of National Medicinal Plant Board (NMPB) for consideration. The Board is also working on to widen its project of supporting industry by collecting ingredients from wild sources substantially.

The Board is taking up the cluster development project as a major initiative during the 11th five year plan period and will set up medicinal plant clusters with adjoining processing zones all over the country. The clusters, like the herbal clusters initiated by Department of Ayush, are expected to promote cultivation of herbs through co-operative societies and self help groups. The adjoining processing zones for each cluster would help the medicinal plant cultivators to process the material within a short time.

The proposal has to receive nod from the Expenditure Finance Committee and Committee for Economic Affairs, prior to execution. The expenditure finance committee is expected to be within a short period and the project may be cleared within two or three months, according to sources.

When contacted, B S Sajwan, chief executive officer, NMPB said, "The project is to support the medicinal plants cultivation through out the country by bringing the cultivation area and processing zones together. But this will be a success only if the industry is ready to come up with buy back scheme where the cultivator can ensure the marketing of plants also". The initiative should help the Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani medicine manufacturers as they are already facing the problem of getting quality raw materials.

Further, the NMPB is also planning a substantially bigger programme to strengthen collection of raw materials of medicinal importance from the wild sources from various forests in the country. The scheme, which has been already launched through a pilot project in some of the states, will be implemented in more states in the second stage. States like Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh has proven potential for the scheme. "The project is to give value addition for the raw materials right from the collection point and to bring them to the market with ensured quality standards," informed Sajwan.

The NMPB, in collaboration with the Union Ministry for Forest and the state forest ministries, would work for co-ordination between the forest department and the tribals in collection of raw materials from wild sources. The Board will also provide training programme for the tribal members to handle and treat the raw materials with care along with emphasis on value addition on the material. However, the official refused to comment much on the projects as the Board is still to receive the approvals and many of the proposals are yet to be finalized.