The Union government is likely to announce the setting up of a Plantation Corporation of India in the upcoming budget.
Plantation Corporation of India
- The PCI will subsume all afforestation-related schemes currently underway in India including the Green India Mission, National Afforestation Programme and compensatory afforestation.
- The corporation will use Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) money to undertake the plantations and investment will also come from the global pension fund.
- CAF is a huge corpus of money collected from projects proponents for diverting forest land to be used for non-forestry activity.
Issues with PCI
- Critics have raised concerns over the move’s impact on the federal structure of forest governance in the country.
- While forests are a concurrent subject, land-related issues are the responsibility of the states.
