PANJIM: With the Central Cabinet approving ambitious agricultural export policy on Thursday, Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu has said that all the restrictions would be lifted on export of organic and processed food, paving way for the growth of the sector.
The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the Agricultural Export Policy, 2018. The Cabinet also approved the proposal for establishment of monitoring framework at Centre with Commerce as the nodal Department with representation from various line ministries, departments, agencies and representatives of State governments, to oversee the implementation of this policy.
“As a part of entire policy, the creation of cold chain infrastructure would be aggressively worked on with the complete involvement of State governments. Each of the State governments has decided to appoint a nodal officer who will work on creating the infrastructure,” the minister said addressing a conference on “Strengthening MSME Ecosystem in Food Processing organised by ASSOCHEM, here.
“At the same time, to make exports possible, the Union government will remove all the restrictions on organic foods as well as processed foods. For other agriculture products, depending on the situation, we will remove the restrictions,” the minister told the gathering of businessmen and government officials.
Prabhu said that the Agricultural Export Policy has been approved after consulting all the States and Union Territories. “This will be the policy that would be implemented across the States for which we have decided to create the framework,” he said.
Elaborating on the policy, Prabhu said, “The idea is that we create clusters for different products for agriculture, horticulture, meat, dairy and others.”
As per the policy, he said, clusters would be created depending on the natural products produced in each of the State. “Under this policy, the benefits of various existing schemes will be combined with the additional outlay of Rs 1,4000 crore,” he added.
The union government is also working on logistics, for which connectivity is an important factor. Prabhu said that proper connectivity would be provided so that the produce can be transported within shortest possible time to avoid waste of the products.
“Abu Dhabi Food processing is something that is very important. And to make it happen in a big way, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which is world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has announced funding for India,” he said.
On tapping the marine export sector, Prabhu said that the Union government would work with 13 coastal States, including Goa, to double the export in this sector from 30 billion dollars to 60 billion dollars.
“The basic idea is to have value addition on marine products so that they fetch good price,” he said adding that the investments from countries like Japan and Korea in this sector is expected.
