The Union ministry of food processing industries, in collaboration with the West Bengal labour department and rural development department, plans to introduce food processing curricullum in all the Industrial Training Institutes across the country this year.
Speaking at an interactive seminar on growth potential of food processing industries organised by Merchants' Chamber of Commerce, Subodh Kant Sahai, union minister for food processing industry, said, “The main bottleneck to the growth of this industry is lack of awareness and lack of technical knowledge. We plan to introduce food processing curricullum in ITIs. The students can be told to impart training to farmers on modern techniques of farming and how to make profit.”
Special focus would be given to women entrepreneurs. The ministry plans to train more than 5 lakh women entreprenuers across the country in the next five years- about 1000 or so in a parliamentary constituency. A plan is being worked out on that, said the minister. Further as part of its 100-day agenda, the food processing ministry has given clearance to 350 new industries and will set up an advanced rice training institute in Tamil Nadu. the ministry hopes to ensure robust training infrastructure for food processing entreprenuers. The ministry has demanded zero per cent goods and service tax on perishable food items and four per cent on non perishable items. “We want the goods and service tax to be zero per cent for perishable food items and four per cent on non-perishable items in order to continue the growth momentum for this industry,” said Sahay.
Despite huge potential in India for processed food, the industry is estimated to be less than Rs 20,000 crore.
India accounts for less than 1.5 per cent of international processed food trade.
Major bottlenecks to this industry are low processing level, inadequate infrastructure, lack of testing facilities, ineffecient supply chain, high inventory costs, taxation issues and high packaging cost.The Union budget announced special Income Tax holidays to those involved in R&D or in supply cold chain this year.
The ministry hopes to reduce Excise on packaging soon.
The ministry in its Vision 2015 document has estimated the size of processed food sector to treble, processing level of perishables to increase from six per cent to 20 per cent, value addition to rise from 20 to 35 per cent and India’s share in global food trade to double from 1.5 per cent to three per cent by 2014-15. "The industry grew by 16.4 per cent last year. We want it to achieve a growth rate of 30-40 per cent," said the minister.
