The Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI), Odisha region, has blamed state-owned Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) for its apathy in establishing a marine food park that would boost the marine sector in the state.
The regional chapter of the marine exporters had proposed IDCO for setting up a food park under PPP (public private partnership) mode under the Mega Food Park Scheme of the Central government on a patch of land identified beside the Dhamnagar-Bhadrak national highway in Bhadrak district.
For finalising the concept and the layout of the food park, the exporters’ body had taken the help of the Pum Associates, a non-profit organisation of Netherlands.
“IDCO for reasons beyond our understanding does not appear to be encouraging the project. They are supposed to submit expression of interest (EoI) to Ministry of Food Processing, Government of India, appoint empanelled consultant for preparing a detailed project report (DPR). However, the actions are still pending in IDCO almost a year now in spite of all our initiatives and cooperation,” said Gorachand Mohanty, President, SEAI - Odisha region, in a letter to the chief secretary.
The exporters body has sought the intervention of chief secretary, BK Pattnaik in establishing the marine food park that would rev up the value addition components of the marine products by five times. Marine products now account for 20 per cent of total exports from the state.
“With the kind of encouragement for cold chain investments given by the Government of India under various schemes, we feel quite disappointed and discouraged to see the delays made by government agencies like IDCO in taking timely decisions for encouraging value added marine products from the state,” rued Mohanty.
The sea food export from the state for the year 2011-12 stood at Rs 850 compared to Rs 606 crore in 2010-11. Bhubaneswar has been declared as the city of export excellence for marine products in 2011 by Union ministry of commerce and textiles.