Allow FDI in multi brand retail only for fruit & vegetables with 100% local sourcing conditions: Badal

Mumbai, Feb 16 (KNN) Union Food Processing Industries Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal has said that her request for opening up of FDI in Multi Brand Retail is only for the fruit and vegetable sector with the condition that the entire fruit and vegetables would be locally sourced.

Badal also said that she has requested for 10-year tax holiday for food processing units located in the Mega Food Parks and continuation of interest subvention scheme and applicability of GST at the lowest applicable rates for the food processing sector.

Inaugurating a Seminar on ‘Opportunities in the Food Processing Sector’ at Make in India week, at Mumbai, she said that she has already written to Prime Minister for allowing 100% FDI in Multi Brand Retail only for such food that is produced in India by the Indian farmers and food products that are manufactured by the manufacturers in India. 

The FPI Minister signalled that government wants all stakeholders on board before announcement of this change in policy and the response of stakeholders is quite overwhelming. She said that it would be a major step towards modernizing of old kirana into modern food retail and providing fair remuneration to farmers. 

Badal strongly advocated India to have a comprehensive Food Policy and said that the Prime Minister has committed himself to mechanizing the farm lands and providing irrigation water to all the farms in the country. She said that India wants to link farmers with modern technology-driven agriculture practices. 

She declared that regulatory mechanism in India is moving from licence regime to registration regime for seamless hassle free production of food products and in line with this, thousands of new ingredient standards have been notified by FSSAI.

“We are committed to new and established investors and cannot let the legacy of inspector raj affect growth of food processing industry,” she said. 

Interacting with the media, the Food Processing Minister said that she has requested for 10-year tax holiday for food processing units located in the Mega Food Parks. She has also requested for continuation of interest subvention scheme and applicability of GST at the lowest applicable rates for the food processing sector. 

Highlighting the achievements in the food processing sector, she informed that while in 2008-2014 period, only two mega food parks were implemented, the present government has already operationalised five more mega food parks and in the next 30 months, all the mega food parks will be operationalised. (With PIB Inputs)