Centre to establish 42 mega food parks with cluster based approach-Harsimrat Kaur Badal

Proposals invited from investors to setup Six mega food parks , Smaller “food parks” will also be setup under 'SAMPADA' scheme

5 Dariya News

Chandigarh 02-Aug-2016

With an aim to help the farmers to add value to their produce and preserve food items, the central government will establish 42 mega food parks with cluster based approach in a phased manner which in turn will help to prevent wastage and damage especially of perishable items.Disclosing this, the Union Food Processing Industry Minister Mrs Harsimrat Kaur Badal today said ministry has invited proposals from the potential investors to setup six mega food parks in the country by September 15 and priority will be accorded to the uncovered states. She added that under the reformulated mega food parks scheme the union government had already approved 42 such parks under 11th & 12th plan projects.The minister informed that the main objective of this scheme is to provide modern infrastructure facilities for the food processing along the value chain from the farm to the market which would include creation of processing infrastructure near the farm, transportation, logistics and centralized processing centers.Elaborating further Mrs Badal said smaller “food parks” would also be setup under 'SAMPADA' scheme in the country having cold storage facilities thereby help in preservation of food items on a larger scale.

Moving toward ‘zero wastage’, she informed that in the past two years ministry had created infrastructure capacity worth Rs. 9,000 crore to process 32 lakh tonnes of perishable fruits and vegetables and reduce wastage by 10 per cent a year.She emphasized that there is huge scope for processing of fruits and vegetables as 2 only percent of perishable horticultural produce is being processed despite the fact that the food processing industry accounts for about 32 percent of the India’s total food market.She said on an average, each mega food project would have around 30-35 medium food processing units with a collective investment of around Rs. 250 crore that would eventually lead to an annual turnover of about Rs. 450-500 crore and creation of direct employment of 2500 persons and indirect employment of about 30,000 people.Mrs. Badal said the food parks would enhance earnings for farmers of their produce, creation of high quality processing infrastructure, reduction in wastage, capacity building of producers, processors and creation of significant direct and indirect employment generation. EOM