Food processing sector to treble in coming years: Minister

The Dollar Business Bureau 

The food processing sector in India is  likely to treble in the coming years due to higher economic growth and the initiatives taken like the 100% FDI in marketing of food items taken by the Government, Harsimrat Kaur Badal said yesterday at an event. 

She was speaking at an industry event, when she said that presently the size of India’s food processing industry is about 1.5 lakh crore. This will treble in the coming years. Retailers, processors ad manufacturers will be the key drivers for facilitating the growth story she said. 

Kaur also said that her ministry is facilitating the ease of doing business and creating investor-friendly policies and schemes to give a fillip to the food sector. 

"Indian food market is ready for innovative food products, processes and investments," Kaur was quoted as saying in a statement to the media. She said her ministry had plans to organise the World Food Summit in 2017. This summit would act as a single consolidated platform for investors, technology solution providers, manufacturers, processors and all other stakeholders of national and international importance. 

Food Processing Secretary, Avinash K Srivastava also detailed that the ministry had plans to achieve a five-fold jump in the Gross Value Addition (GVA) of the food processing industry to the GVA of agriculture, which would in turn be helpful in higher allocation of financial resources. Srivastava offered an advice to the industry asking them to be ethical when developing their supplier chains and integrating the backward linkages to the supply chain. 

Also speaking at the event DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek opined that the, “ food processing has been identified as one of the 10 key sectors under Make in India initiative as it presents an attractive capital and technology investment opportunity for domestic and foreign investors. And the government’s decision to permit 100 per cent FDI in trading, including through e-commerce, in respect of food products manufactured or produced in India is expected to provide a major impetus to investments, employment and job creation in the food processing sector”. 

Vice President of CII Rakesh Bharti Mittal said, “This will offer the advantage of improving price realisation for the farmers by reducing intermediaries and strengthening supply chain through its forward and backward linkages, in addition to reducing wastages of the perishables.” 

Present at the event, Krish Iyer, President & CEO, Walmart India suggested, “the policy of FDI in marketing of food products may also include a certain component of non-food items, as part of the overall product portfolio of the retailers.”