PNS | VIJAYAWADA
Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy virtually inaugurated six food processing units and laid foundation stones for another five units from the Camp Office here on Tuesday.
The Chief Minister launched four primary vegetable and fruit processing centres in Annamayya and Chittoor districts, a millet processing unit at L Kota in Vizianagaram
district, onion and tomato dehydration cluster at Thadakanepalle in Kurnool district and laid stones for three primary tomato processing centres in Satya Sai and Anantapur districts, groundnut processing unit at Dharmavaram in Satya Sai district and Mondelez India Foods in Sri City, Chittoor district.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said that the government was helping farmers in selling their produce for MSP through RBKs.
“We are launching 421 primary processing collection centres mapped to 1,912 RBKs and 43 cold storage rooms linked to 194 RBKs,” he said, adding that there would be a total of 945 collection centres and the works of 344 cold storage rooms were in progress.
While cold storage rooms, drying platforms, collection centres, grading and segregation units should be linked to RBKs as part of primary processing, secondary processing units should be established at the district-level, he said.
“Whenever farmers do not get MSP for their produce, we are helping them through RBKs by intervention and primary and secondary processing centres would play key role in this,” he said. These centres would play proactive role in future in facilitating better prices.
The Chief Minister said that he was happy to lay foundation stone for the Rs. 1,600-crore unit of Mondelez India Foods in Sri City. “I wish all success to this company which manufactures chocolates, Cadbury and Bournvita. Its readiness to invest Rs.1,500 crore in the second phase speaks of the confidence the industry has in the government, he added.
“In the past four years, we have spent Rs. 8,000crore through intervention for providing MSP whenever there was price fall and AP is the only State in the country to have provided MSP even for millets and linking them with PDS through RBKs,” he said, adding that the government had been giving MSP even for crops which were not covered by the Centre.
The 55,620-MT capacity groundnut processing unit at Dharmavaram would help 15,000 groundnut farmers, he said, adding that the Rs 75-crore unit would become functional in nine months.
The four vegetable and fruit processing centres in Annamayya and Chittoor districts will help 2414 farmers while the proposed tomato processing units in Satya Sai and Anantapur districts will benefit 3,588 farmers, he hoped.
He said that 32 primary and 13 secondary processing units for millets were coming up soon. The 7,200-MT secondary millet processing unit in Vizianagaram district would help millet farmers, he said.
Minister for Agriculture and Cooperation K. Govardhana Reddy, Chief Secretary Dr. K.S. Jawahar Reddy, Special Chief Secretary (Agriculture) Gopalakrishna Dwivedi, Principal Secretary (Marketing and Cooperation) Chiranjeevi Choudary, Horticultural Commissioner SS Sridhar, AP Food Processing Society CEO, L Sridhar Reddy and representatives of food processing units were present.
