The State government has set a target of attracting an investment of Rs. 5,000 crore to the food processing sector by 2020, but there seem to be many stumbling blocks in achieving it.
Processable raw material, labour with required skills, necessary infrastructure, and even investment seem to be insufficient.
Secretary for Food Processing Girija Shankar, delivering the keynote address at a seminar on ‘Opportunities and challenges — Food Processing Industry’, organised by the Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry Federation here on Tuesday, said that investment was hard to come into the food processing industry.
Semi-skilled, less skilled persons could also be employed in the sector. The government had set a target of creating an employment of 50,000 in the sector by 2020, Mr Shankar said.
Top on the priority list was the maximum exploitation of crops like banana, coconut, millets, citrus fruits, and mango that were being produced on a massive scale in north Andhra, but were undergoing minimum processing.
Other priorities were encouraging processed freshwater and sea fish export, domestic sale of frozen fish, and exploring tuna fishing, he said.
In all, 87 Expressions of Interest (EoIs) were received in the food processing sector. Out of them, 13 were for mega food parks, eight for integrated food parks, 10 cold chain projects, four primary processing centres, three testing labs, 42 new food processing units, and seven expansion/modernisation units.
Federation of Chambers president-elect Muthavarapu Murali Krishna said that the A.P. food processing industrial policy was one of the best in the country, but just that was not enough.
Non-Resident Telugu Association office-bearer and adviser to the government Vemuri Ravi Kumar said that the skill level of people in the State was very poor. Ninety per cent of the labour available was of “level one” skill. There was an urgent need to address the problem. While 65 per cent of food was processed in western countries, in India it was only 2 per cent. There was some sort of stigma toward processed food, which needed to be addressed, he said.
AP Chambers Executive Director Potluri Bhaskara Rao and CEO of Andhra Pradesh Food Processing Society Y.S. Prasad spoke.
