India need not depend on import of fresh fruits and vegetables as the world's largest producer is self-sufficient in these items, a senior Agriculture Ministry official said today.
His views come in the wake of a latest report by Delhi- think tank ICRIER expressing concern about high import tariff on fruits and vegetables as one of the supply chain barriers impacting the consumption pattern in India.
The ICRIER report said fruits and vegetables like broccoli, carrots, bananas, pineapples, papaya, watermelon and green chillies attract 30 per cent import tariff, while garlic has 100 per cent import tariff.
It also noted that the daily intake of fruits and veggies remained lower than WHO recommended quantity of 400 grams per person despite India being the world's largest producer of these fresh items.
Asked if supply need to be increased through imports, Agriculture Commissioner S K Malhotra said, "We need to import fresh fruits and vegetables because we have achieved self-sufficiency."
The daily availability of fresh fruits and veggies is about 425 grams per person in India, which is much higher than the recommended quantity (400 grams per person) for daily consumption by the World Health Organisation, he told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of the ICRIER report.
India's total production of fruits and vegetables is around 280 million tonnes and 3-4 per cent of which gets exported, he added.
Malhotra said many schemes have been launched to boost the production of fruits and vegetables because food security is incomplete without addressing the nutritional security.
"Erstwhile Planning Commission had recommended the ministry to achieve production level of 320 million tonnes by 2016-17. Today, we have achieved 280 million tonnes of production of fruits and vegetables. We are still lagging behind. We have to produce more," he said.
On post harvest losses, the official said that there are 5-18 per cent losses at present and vary from crop to crop and place to place. The ministry is working on bringing down post harvesting losses through various programmes.
