Source: PRS India
The Ministry of Food Processing Industries released the Draft National Food Processing Policy, 2019 for public comments.
Aims
- The draft policy aims for the development of the food processing sector and addressing the critical gaps hampering its growth.
- It also aims to increase investment in the sector by six-fold by 2035.
Objectives
- Reducing wastage at the farmer level to increase their incomes
- Supporting the food processing industry to create employment opportunities
- Ensuring a higher deployment of credit in the sector
- Enhancing the availability of safer, affordable, and higher quality food products for consumer, and
- Infrastructure and skill-building to meet the demands of the sector.
Key features
- Infrastructure development: The draft policy seeks to incentivize the creation of supply chain infrastructure for the food processing sector. Some of the proposed measures include:
- Identifying, developing and promoting new agriculture processing and production clusters, and
- Supporting the development of logistics infrastructures such as cleaning and packing facilities.
- Incentives and support measures: The draft policy proposes various incentives that can be provided for the growth of the sector. These include:
- Capital investment subsidy for setting up new food processing units and technology up-gradation of existing units
- Fiscal incentives such as lower Goods and Services Tax rates on food products and food processing machineries, and
- Certain electrical duty and land-related concessions may also be provided.
- Training and skill development: The draft policy proposes various incentives for the promotion of employment such as;
- Promoting employment welfare
- Facilitating farmers to set up food processing units, and
- Promoting food processing training cum incubation centres.
- It also proposes starting new courses and conducting research in food technology, entrepreneurship, and management.
