December 17, 2009

Food parks: India's food processing future?

The Indian government has approved a new scheme to establish 30 mega food parks with a view to provide state-of-the-art infrastructure for food processing sector in the country during the 11th plan.

According to the Union Food Processing Industry Minister Subodh Kant Sahay, the infrastructure would be developed on a pre-identified cluster basis with a strong backward and forward linkage, providing value addition of agricultural commodities including poultry, meat, dairy, fisheries etc in a demand driven manner.

"Financial assistance has been enhanced to 50% of the project cost excluding land component in general areas and 75% in difficult areas, subject to a maximum of Rs.50 crore for setting up of mega food parks," Sahay said.

He also informed that the principle approval includes setting up 10 mega food park projects in the Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

"Detail Project Report (DPR) in case of Andhra Pradesh (Chittoor), Assam (Nalbari), Jharkhand (Ranchi) and Uttarakhand (Haridwar) has been approved and first instalment of grant has been released in these areas," Sahay said.