Ministry of food processing completes Vision 2015 document

10 Aug 2011 Evaluate

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MFPI) has finalized its Vision 2015 Document, which is expected to reduce the wastage quotient in the processing of the perishable and it also aims to increase the size of the food processing sector by three times. The Minister of State, MFPI, Charan Das Mahant, said, the document envisage increasing the level of processing of perishables from 6% to 20%, value addition from 20% to 35% and share in global food trade from 1.5% to 3% by 2015.

To minimize the wastage of fruit and vegetables, MFPI is encouraging the creation of cold chain facilities through a scheme for Cold Chain, Value Addition and Preservation Infrastructure coined in the 11th Five Year Plan. This was to give finance help to project proposals received from public and private organizations for cold chain infrastructure development.

Charan Das Mahant said, the scheme envisaged financial assistance in the form of grant-in-aid at the rate of 50% of the total cost of plant and machinery and technical civil works in general areas and 75% for North Eastern Region and difficult areas subject to a maximum of Rs 10 crore. However, the minister did not provide any information on the effectiveness of the scheme. The private sector has been criticizing government for not having a clear policy or scheme for exponentially increasing the cold storage infrastructure in the country.

The contribution of agriculture to India’s GDP at the time of Independence was 70% and it accounted for 85% of total employment. The share of agriculture in the country’s GDP has been gradually declining since then. At present, the contribution of agriculture to GDP is about 25%, but it still engages about 70% of the population. The annual average rate of growth of agricultural GDP has also declined from around 3.5% during mid-eighties to mere 1.5 % during 2006-07. It is estimated that if the country has to maintain a GDP growth rate of over 8%, the agricultural sector has to grow at the rate of at least 4%. The country has a huge potential for growth in agriculture with about 160 million hectares of arable land and diverse agro climatic conditions, suitable for cultivation of a wide variety of crops.

India currently produces about 50 million tonnes of fruits, which is about 9% of the world’s production of fruits and 90 million tonnes of vegetables, which accounts for 11% of the world’s vegetable production. Though India has a strong raw material base, it has been unable to tap the potential for processing and value addition in perishables like fruits and vegetables. Only about 2% of the fruits and vegetables in India are processed, which is much lower when compared to countries like USA (65 %), Philippines (78%) and China (23)%

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