Jaipur, June 7 (KNN) The Akhil Rajya Trade & Industry Association (Rajasthan) has urged the union government to provide 50 new agro-processing clusters to the state. 

Prem Biyani, the executive president of Akhil Rajya Trade & Industry Association said that the setting up of these food processing clusters would help the state export quality products along with consumption in the local markets. 

Biyani highlighted that this would ensure that farmers get better prices for their produce because agriculture products purchased at support prices by the government would flow to these units, and this would also reduce the economic burden on the government. 

Currently, the Agric­ulture & allied sectors contribute around 25 per cent to Rajasthan’s gross domestic product. 

The state has in place an agro-processing, agri-business, and agri-export promotion policy, which offers SOPs and concessions such as capital subsidies, subsidies on the freight for export of ordinary and organic produce, and interest subsidies for agro-processing units and for agro-processing infrastructure projects. 

Rajasthan alone contributes 42 per cent of the country's total bajra production, according to statistics. Similarly, it contributes 45 per to mustard, 22 per cent to oilseeds, 17 per to sesame, 19 per cent to groundnut, 20 per to chana, 13 per to jawar, and 85 per to guar. 

In the fiscal year 2021–22, the total production of fruits was 956,000 tonnes, while that of vegetables stood at 2.37 million tonnes, spices (1.04 mt), food grains and pulses (25.4 mt) and oilseeds (10 mt).  (KNN Bureau)