Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 5 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to inaugurate a conference of state food processing industry ministers here Tuesday to get inputs for a nation-wide policy and give a push to the $67-billion industry.
The focus of the policy will be to step up the level of processing food and related produce in the country, bring down the wastage of perishables from the present 50 percent and scale up research and development efforts.

The food processing ministry of the central government, which is organising the Oct 6 conference, has been working for a policy separate from the country’s industrial policy because of the perishable nature of agricultural produce.

It has also chalked out a Vision 2015 plan, which envisages doubling India’s share in the world food processing market to 3 percent, increasing the level of processing of perishables from 6 percent to 20 percent, and raising value addition of such products from 20 percent to 35 percent.

Earlier this year, Food Processing Industries Minister Subodh Kant Sahai had said the proposed new policy would lay special emphasis on private-public partnership for giving a commercial orientation to R&D activities in the sector.

“It will turn the spotlight on technical capacity building for research with the ultimate aim of increasing the processing of perishables from the 2007-08 level of 10 percent to 20 percent by 2015 and raise value addition (of agricultural produce) from 25 percent to 35 percent,” Sahai had stated.