Union Govt. Sanctions 42 Mega Food Park : Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti
10 March, New Delhi
A total 42 Mega Food Parks (MFPs) have been sanctioned for setting-up across the country, the Lok Sabha was informed Tuesday.
Minister of State for Food Processing Industries Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, in a written reply, said out of these, 21 Mega Food Parks have been accorded final approval and were at various stages of implementation, while four Mega Food Parks were progressing towards meeting the conditions for final approval.
She said , the Scheme aimed at providing modern infrastructure facilities along the value chain from farm gate to the market, with strong backward and forward linkages.It was expected to facilitate the efforts to increase the level of processing of agricultural and horticultural produce, with particular focus on perishables, in the country and thereby to check the wastage, she said .
According to her, the scheme has a cluster based approach, on a hub and spokes model. It includes creation of infrastructure for primary processing and storage near the farm in the form of Primary Processing Centres (PPCs) and Collection Centres (CCs) and common facilities and enabling infrastructure at Central Processing Centre (CPC).
She said the PPCs were meant for functioning as a link between the producers and processors for supply of raw material to the Central Processing Centres. CPC has need-based core processing facilities and basic enabling infrastructure to be used by the food processing units set up at the CPC.
The minimum area required for a CPC is 50 acres. The scheme is demand-driven and would facilitate food processing units to meet environmental, safety and social standards. She said Mega Food Park project is implemented by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which is a Body Corporate registered under the Companies Act. State Government/State Government entities/Cooperatives applying for setting up a project under the scheme are not required to form a separate SPV.
The Minister said the Implementation period of a Mega Food Park project is 30 months. The financial assistance for Mega Food Park is provided in the form of grant-in-aid at 50 per cent of eligible project cost in general areas and at 75 per cent of eligible project cost in NE Region and difficult areas (Hilly States and ITDP areas) subject to maximum of Rs 50 crore per project.
It is expected that on an average, each project will have around 30-35 food processing units with a collective investment of Rs 250 crore, that would eventually lead to an annual turnover of about Rs 450-500 crore and creation of direct and indirect employment to the extent of about 30,000 people, she added.