Tuesday, June 10, 2008

India’s fruit & veg sector to be growth driver

by Jo Black

Fruit and vegetables is an emerging sector that holds a lot of opportunity for both agriculture and industry and is going to be the driving force of Indian economy, Subodh Kant Sahai, Minister of State for Food Processing Industries said addressing the the ‘Fruit & Vegetable Summit 2008′ organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), along with the Ministry of Agriculture and its affiliated institutions, the National Horticulture Mission and the National Horticulture Board that concluded in New Delhi.

India is the world’s second largest producer of fruit and vegetable. Yet despite the changing food habits, Rs 500 billion ($12.5 billion) worth of produce gets wasted every year in the absence of a proper value chain for food processing, he said and added that his ministry has made food processing a tax-less industry to encourage the industry to invest in this sector.

While the industrial growth rate was stagnating, food processing industry was growing at 13 per cent, Sahai said, and added that the challenge was to reach these benefits to the farmers.

The government is working on 30 cold chain routes countrywide to enable integration of the sector from farmgate to the retail outlet, he said.

His ministry will soon announce the setting up of 30 mega food parks in all the states so that cold chain facilities are available in catchment areas comprising not more than three to four districts, the minister added.

The summit has been a foundation stone of a great journey of developing globally competitive value chains in the F&V sector and catalysing holistic policy development and creating an interface among the industry, the government and the farmers, said Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Chairman CII National Council on Agriculture and Vice Chairman Bharti Enterprises.

Following wideranging discussions during the two-day summit, it was agreed that organised retail backed up by integrated value chains are the key to growth, he said.

CII has set up an Agri Council and a special joint task force with the government and the industry to work out a strategy paper listing key imperatives such as scalability, integrated value chains, price competitiveness and cluster approach for farming, for making the sector competitive in global and domestic markets, Mittal said.

 

 

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