The Andhra Pradesh government is preparing a five-year draft plan for the food processing sector, which will be implemented from the next financial year, a senior state government official said today. The proposed plan will cover the entire sectors of ambit of the food processing industry such as food parks, integrated cold chains and schemes for marine, aqua, dairy and poultry products, state’s Principal Secretary (Food Processing) Sabyasachi Ghosh told reporters here. Speaking on the sidelines Assocham’s national summit on ‘Opportunities in cold chain’, he said: “We have already arrived at a few broad ideas that have to be implemented. Preparation of the draft (for the five-year plan) is currently under way, which will be submitted to the chief minister in a couple of weeks for approval”. He said the plan will encourage private participation in the sector and presently they are working on the investment modalities. Andhra Pradesh, which currently has a cold storage capacity of 1 million tonnes, stands first in the country with capacity utilisation of 92 per cent, followed by Karnataka (60 per cent) and Maharashtra (51 per cent), he said. Ghosh added that ‘reefer (refrigerated) transportation’ is critical in the entire cold storage chain, and there is need to subsidise the purchase of reefer vehicles. PTI
