India’s cashew sector is governed by three central government-linked institutions whose mandates are easy to confuse from the outside but are actually quite cleanly divided in practice: the Cashew Export Promotion Council of India (CEPCI), the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), and the Directorate of Cashewnut and Cocoa Development (DCCD). Add in a fourth statistics body and a couple of state-level institutions, and it’s no surprise that both newcomers and experienced traders sometimes reach out to the wrong office with a question. This guide sorts out exactly what each body does and, more usefully, which one to contact depending on what you actually need to know.
Why Does India Have Three Different Cashew Institutions?
India ended up with three distinct cashew-related institutions because they were built to serve three genuinely different functions — export promotion and trade regulation, cultivation and production development, and general agricultural export administration — rather than growing organically into overlapping turf. CEPCI is the export-and-trade-focused body, DCCD handles the agronomy and farm-production side, and APEDA sits above both as the broader central authority for agricultural export statistics and registration across many products, not cashew alone. Understanding that three-way split from the outset makes the rest of this page much easier to use as a practical reference.
What Does CEPCI Do? The Cashew Export Promotion Council of India
CEPCI is India’s official cashew export promotion council, founded in 1955 and counting roughly 238 member exporters today, making it the longest-standing and most trade-facing of India’s cashew institutions. Beyond promotion, CEPCI performs genuinely regulatory functions: it issues the Registration-cum-Membership Certificate (RCMC) that Indian cashew exporters need to trade legally, and it mediates trade disputes between exporters and their overseas buyers — a practical, underused resource for anyone stuck in a contractual disagreement with an Indian cashew supplier. CEPCI’s official channel is cashewindia.org, the primary reference point for anything export-side involving Indian cashew.
What Is the RCMC and Why Exporters Need It
The RCMC is the registration certificate that formally establishes an entity as a recognised cashew exporter under CEPCI’s authority, and it is a practical prerequisite for accessing various export benefits and for being recognised as a legitimate trading counterparty in the sector. Any Indian cashew exporter a buyer is evaluating should be able to produce current CEPCI membership and RCMC status without difficulty — its absence is a reasonable due-diligence flag worth raising directly.
CEPCI’s Testing Laboratory and Dispute-Mediation Role
One of CEPCI’s most practically useful functions for buyers is the CEPCI Laboratory and Research Institute, an NABL-accredited facility (accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2017) and FSSAI-notified testing lab that performs physical, chemical, and microbiological testing on cashew. For a buyer who needs independent, credible verification of a shipment’s quality parameters — moisture content, aflatoxin levels, or physical grading disputes — CEPCI’s lab (cepclab.org.in) is a legitimate, accredited third-party option rather than relying solely on an exporter’s self-reported test results. This pairs directly with understanding how cashew is graded internationally in the first place; see our ISO and UNECE grading standards explainer for the underlying specifications CEPCI’s lab tests against, and our comparison of processing-facility certifications for how lab accreditation like NABL/ISO 17025 fits into the broader certification landscape.
What Does APEDA Do for Cashew?
APEDA is a much broader central government authority covering many agricultural and processed food export categories, not cashew specifically, but it plays two important roles for the cashew sector: administering exporter registration requirements and publishing India’s official cashew export volume and value statistics. Where CEPCI represents the cashew trade’s own promotional and dispute-resolution interests, APEDA functions more as the general government statistical and registration layer sitting above the sector — the reference point for official export figures rather than trade advocacy. APEDA’s cashew-specific resources are available at apeda.gov.in/cashew.
What Does DCCD Do? The Cultivation and Production Side
DCCD stands apart from CEPCI and APEDA entirely because its mandate is agronomic and production-focused rather than trade-focused — nurseries, farm-level development schemes, and production statistics rather than exports. This makes DCCD the correct reference point for anything concerning growing cashew in India, not selling it internationally, and it functions alongside India’s dedicated research institute, the ICAR-Directorate of Cashew Research (DCR) in Puttur, which conducts cultivar development and published the first cashew genome sequence — a landmark scientific milestone for the crop globally. DCCD’s official site is dccd.gov.in.
DGCIS and the Statistics Layer Beneath CEPCI and APEDA
Beneath both CEPCI’s and APEDA’s published figures sits a fourth body worth knowing about: the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), India’s official customs and foreign-trade statistics portal. DGCIS data is the primary-source counterpart to CEPCI’s industry-reported figures — useful for anyone who wants to verify trade statistics against raw customs records rather than industry-body summaries, similar in role to how Vietnam’s GSO functions relative to VINACAS’s industry commentary in our Vietnam cashew industry guide.
State-Level Bodies: Kerala Cashew Board and Kerala State Cashew Corporation
Beyond the three central institutions, Kerala — historically India’s cashew-processing heartland — operates two additional, genuinely distinct state-government entities: the Kerala Cashew Board Ltd, a procurement special-purpose vehicle, and the Kerala State Cashew Corporation, a public processing and trading corporation. These are worth knowing about specifically if your interest is in Kerala’s state-level market interventions rather than India’s national trade framework, since the two entities serve different functions despite the similar names.
Which Body Should You Contact? A Practical Decision Guide
If your question concerns exporting, trade documentation, dispute resolution, or independent quality testing, CEPCI is the correct first stop. If your question concerns cultivation, farm-level schemes, or crop research, DCCD (and ICAR-DCR for research specifically) is the correct reference. If your question concerns official government export statistics or general export registration across products, APEDA is the right authority, with DGCIS as the underlying customs-data source when you need to verify figures independently. Getting this right the first time saves real back-and-forth, particularly for international buyers unfamiliar with India’s institutional layout.
Common Confusions to Avoid
The most common error is treating CEPCI and APEDA as interchangeable simply because both touch cashew exports — CEPCI is cashew-specific and trade-body-oriented, while APEDA is a general agricultural export authority covering many products. A second common error is directing farming or cultivation questions to CEPCI, when DCCD is the actual mandate holder for that side of the industry. It’s also worth remembering that raw cashew nuts in India currently sit in something of a regulatory gap under FSSAI’s general “foods not specified” category rather than having a dedicated cashew-specific standard — a nuance covered in full in our India FSSAI regulation explainer.
How to Engage With These Institutions
For export and trade matters, start at cashewindia.org (CEPCI); for cultivation and production matters, start at dccd.gov.in; for official statistics, cross-reference apeda.gov.in/cashew against DGCIS’s customs data. Each of these institutions maintains its own direct communication channels, and going to the right one first — rather than starting with a general web search — remains the fastest way to get an authoritative answer in a sector where mandates are clearly divided but not always obviously labelled from the outside.
This page reflects India’s cashew institutional structure as researched for general reference. Membership figures, mandates, and contact channels can change — confirm current detail directly with CEPCI, APEDA, or DCCD before relying on this for a specific export or sourcing decision.