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Minister for Food Processing Harsimrat Badal, who began her second stint at the Ministry on Tuesday, said one of the key focus areas of the Ministry will be employment generation, especially in the rural region
Speaking to mediapersons after assuming office, Badal said the food processing sector is one of the highest generators of employment in the country.
Right infrastructure
“Employment gets generated when the right infrastructure is put in place. In the past five years, our schemes have been focusing on grounding of the right infrastructure for processing through operationalisation of mega food parks and fast tracking of cold chain projects. We will expand this further. Our efforts will be to enable youngsters to become entrepreneurs and job generators rather than job seekers,” she added.
The Ministry also expects to now launch the Gram Samridhi Yojana scheme in collaboration with the World Bank. This is currently in the pilot stage in three states and will be taken up for a Cabinet nod.
“We expect the Gram Samridhi Yojana to enable creation of 50,000-60,000 micro processing enterprises. This scheme is targeted at small farmers and smart processors,” Badal added.
Setting up of a dedicated NBFC to finance food processing sector and bringing a comprehensive national food processing policy will be among the other key priorities for the Ministry in the next five years, she added.
Reduce food wastage
“Our focus will be to continue to reduce food wastage through creation of infrastructure and enabling farmers to do value-addition of the their crops, in line with PM Modi’s goal of doubling farmers’ income by 2022,” Badal stated.
Meanwhile, the Ministry is also gearing for the the second edition of the World Food India event slated to be held later this year. “Our aim will be to double the amount of investments than what we got the last time,” she added.
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