State to invest Rs 50,000 crore on agribusiness development next five years

State to invest Rs 50,000 crore on agribusiness development next five years

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangalore, June 1, 2011: Additional Secretary to the Department of Agriculture Vasanthkumar says that the state is mulling over the idea of investing Rs. 50,000 crore for the next five years with the hopes of developing strategic deals with 10 countries to achieve comprehensive development in agriculture and agriculture-related areas.

 

On June 8, a delegation of 40 will be arriving from Netherlands to launch the state’s plans to organize a mega Global Agribusiness and Food Processing Investors’ Meet, he added. The meet, which is scheduled to be held in August or September, will witness the signing of a MoU for the investment of Rs. 50,000 crore for the next five years.

Mr. Vasanthkumar was addressing the members of Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) on Tuesday. Further speaking, he said that a few MoUs will be signed on June 8 in a bid to improve horticultural produce in the state. The delegation will be led by the Minister-in-charge of Agriculture in Netherlands.

Revealing further details, he said that the state is looking forward to the idea of partnering with 10 countries, including Australia, Netherlands, Israel, New Zealand, and GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). The state hopes to use its alliance with Norway to improve its fisheries department and its alliance with France to improve dairy products. The state wants to team up with Israel to learn better water management technologies, he said.

He also said that the state, which finalized the Integrated Agribusiness Development Policy 2011 recently, will remove cess on agricultural produce. This cess needs to be removed before amendments to important laws were introduced for the implementation of the policy. Stating that there will no longer be any cess on perishable items, he added that cess on many other agriculture-related items will also be removed. The policy included plenty of market reforms, he added.

He also said that public private partnership (PPP) model will be used to construct sophisticated facilities such as cold storages with the hopes that farmers can use them instead of the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) yards, which collect cess.

He stated that private investors will share their revenue with the state government, which will provide land for development of various facilities.