The Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) is rolling out a new scheme specifically targeting small units in food processing sector. With over Rs 3,000 crore fund corpus and support from the World Bank, the scheme named as Gram Samridhi Yojana is aimed at upgrading the smaller units of food processing in rural areas.
The scheme has got in principle approval from Niti Ayog while the proposal would now be sent to the Ministry of Finance for approval. Out of Rs 3,000 crore, Rs 1,500 cr is being provided by the World Bank, Rs 1,000 crore by the Union government and Rs 500 crore shall be the state government’s contribution to the project.
MoFPI has been working on this scheme for the last four months, which also aims at improving the entrepreneurship among smaller units.
The scheme shall be used for making credit available to the smaller food processing units across the country and for transfer of technologies. This plan will be in addition to the Rs 6,000 crore fund marked for the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana.
The ministry will be investing heavily on improving the entrepreneurship development for micro units, along with providing capacity to access the credit institutions available in the country and providing training and research & development support to them, under this plan.
According to MoFPI, there are arond 25 lakh SME units currently operating in the food processing sector and this scheme would also look into affordable and transferable technology solutions for the sector.
“Aimed at helping the smaller processing units run as cottage industry, or run by farmer producers’ organisations in rural parts of the country, the scheme is designed to impart people information regarding updated machinery and management skills with respect to the food processing sector,” informed an official with MoFPI, while speaking to FnB News.
The official added that this is also part of the backward-forward linkage plan of the ministry wherein, the rural areas would get benefited in terms of modern processing knowhow, upgraded machinery, packaging knowhow and ultimately market access for their produce.
Under this plan, the ministry is expecting to disburse a loan of upto Rs 10 lakh to individual or a group interested in availing the credit facility along with interest subsidy.
Elaborating on the scheme, another official at MoFPI, stated that modernisation of the rural food processing is also aimed under this plan wherein people or entrepreneurs would be made skilled in management of the units, thereby helping them to meet out marketing challenges.
As reported earlier, UP government has already made plans for implementing the project, which is awaiting for necessary approval.
It is pertinent to mention here that more than 80% of the food processing industries lie in the hands of MSME sector wherein more than 60% of the units are in rural areas.
