A sum of Rs 3,000 crore will be made available to small food processing units with the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) working on a new scheme for MSME sector. Secretary MoFPI Pushpa Subramaniyam revealed this information to FnB News while speaking on the sidelines of an event here recently.
This corpus will be in addition to the Rs 6,000 crore fund marked for the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana for cluster development.
Subramaniyam disclosed that MoFPI has already started working on the scheme, which also aims at improving entrepreneurship among smaller units.
“We are in process of formulating a new scheme of about Rs 3,000 crore - MSME sector-specific, where we will be investing heavily on improving entrepreneurship development of micro units, along with providing capacity to access the credit institutions available in the country besides providing training and research & development support to them,” she said.
Subramaniyam pointed out that 25 lakh MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) units were currently working in the sector and this scheme would look into affordable and transferable technology solutions for them.
According to her, MoFPI would be pushing hard for making credit availability to the food processing sector in the future and that serious efforts were put in by the ministry in this direction.
The MoFPI Secretary stated, “The outlook I see for food processing industry is that there would be a major push to make credit available to the sector. Several crucial steps were taken in the last few years by the government in this regard like NABARD fund of Rs 2,000 crore has been sanctioned.”
She continued, “Food processing sector was recognised as a priority sector for lending by the financial institutions since 2015 and a sector-specific financial institution is in the making to provide flexible products to the agri processing sector and make more credit available to them.”
Subramaniyam added that there has been 15% increment in the loan disbursement to the processing sector in last two fiscals.
Meanwhile, talking about the contribution of the food processing to economy, she stated that in value-added terms to GDP, in one decade, the sector has seen 13% annual growth and in terms of export as well, the sector has seen similar 13% growth annually.
She stated that however, there was also enormous opportunity for the sector to grow further, and reiterated that MoFPI would play a facilitating role and give support in every manner.
