BHUBANESWAR: The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) has proposed to adopt two districts of Odisha for setting up agro and food processing clusters in association with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the Centre. It would be on the lines of Assocham’s initiatives in West Bengal, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir, where the body has already signed a pact with UNIDO for development of the clusters. In West Bengal, Murshidabad and Medinipore districts have been selected while Muzaffarpur and Bhagalpur districts in Bihar have been included. The UNIDO team would visit the states in the first week of March to give a final shape to the projects. The funding for the projects, which started on a pilot mode, would be done by UNIDO with Assocham as the executing agency and the State and Central governments as facilitators. The proposal for Odisha would be put before UNIDO during their visit to India next month and their association would be explored, Assocham secretary-general DS Rawat said here on Tuesday while releasing a study paper “Orissa: A rising investment destination for agro and food processing”. As per the proposal, the State Government would identify two districts for the project based on their unique potential in agriculture and agro processing. Around 5,000 farmers would be selected in each district and provided training and inputs for value addition to their yields and outputs. Linkages would be created between them and the agro and food processing units, informed the head or agriculture division of Assocham, OS Tyagi. The industry body has made several recommendations for growth of the agro and food processing sector in Odisha which has huge investment potential considering easy availability of raw material and the conducive business environment. The areas that have been identified as surplus in crops, vegetables and fruit production should be developed as sound economic clusters and provided with all necessary infrastructure, storage and transport facilities, power and irrigation on a priority basis. The food processing sector in India is around ` 9 lakh crore with Odisha accounting for only around 4.5 per cent. By 2015 industry growth is projected to go up to ` 13 lakh crore and Orissa’s share would rise to 6 per cent. “But the State has the potential to command more than 10 per cent share,” Rawat said. Assocham has also suggested adoption of contract farming model in various horticultural and cash crops. The Government should also focus on establishing pack houses, freezing and processing plants, storage houses and other crop specific logistics.
Comments
0 comment