July 24, 2009

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) has demanded a fund of Rs.7,500 crore Corpus Fund to infuse technologies and skills for meat and fish processing to increase 25 percent in next 2 years.

 

Currently, 70 percent of meat & poultry and fish production are unorganised sectors resulting to a stagnant 2 percent and 4 percent, even though domestic meat and poultry production has already exceeded 1 lakh million tonnes levels annually. Fish production is estimated to have touched over 7.25 million tonnes.

 

It is estimated that there are 40,000 food processing units in India of which 10,000 units are engaged in meat, poultry and fish processing and remaining 30,000 processing units exclusively process fruits and vegetables which in percentage terms process a mere 2 percent of their total production, adds the ASSOCHAM.

 

The country's meat and fish processors have extremely cumbersome licensing process and stringent rules and regulations. The units should suitably process meat poultry and fish production as they are not currently meeting large scale requirements and remain within jurisdiction of unorganised sector.

 

Only 50 percent of India's meat production is exported to countries in the Middle East, the pre-dominance of which is for buffalo meat. According to latest figure available with the ASSOCHAM, India exports a little over 5 lakh tonnes of meat to gulf and neighbouring countries including part of Africa continent.

 

Of total 7.25 million tonnes of fish production, over 50 percent is exported to ASEAN region which is a good performance because in fishing sector, India has been doing reasonably well on export front even without developing higher fish processing technologies. This is because of coastal benefit that India enjoys, said ASSOCHAM.