RS. 92,000 CRORE WORTH OF INVESTMENTS IN FOOD
PROCESSING INDUSTRY LIKELY DURING THE TENTH PLAN
The National Council for Applied Economic
Research has estimated that an investment of Rs.38,530 crore has
been made in the food processing sector during the Ninth Plan
and the investment is likely to go up to Rs.92,000 crore during
the Tenth Plan. This was stated by the Minister of State for Food
Processing Industries, Shri N.T. Shanmugam after launching the
International Food Processing and Hospitality Expo 2002, here
today. Shri Shanmugam said that food processing industry, which
is a labour intensive industry has provided employment to 75.58
lakh people during 2001-02.
The Minister announced that Tenth
Plan outlay for the Ministry of Food Processing Industry has increased
to Rs.650 crore during the Tenth Plan from the Ninth Plan outlay
of Rs.235 crore. He said that during the Tenth Plan emphasis would
be given to schemes on infrastructure development such as food
parks, modernization of abattoirs, integrated cold chain, irradiation
facility, value added centers and packaging. In addition, schemes
for backward and forward integration, promotional activities like
generic advertisements, schemes for quality assurance, research
and development, establishment of network of laboratories, scheme
for human resource development and scheme to strengthen the institutions
would be implemented.
Shri Shanmugam said that food parks
are one of the important schemes of his Ministry in which upto
Rs.4 crore is provided as subsidy to promoters of food parks.
The Ministry has sanctioned 29 food parks in different parts of
the country whose gestation period is normally three to five years.
An amount of Rs.58.35 crore has been released by the Ministry
to the total Food Parks so far, he added.
The Expo has been organized by Wisitex
Foundation.
