The Ministry of Finance said in an update on Saturday (January 18, 2025) that 1,646 food processing projects (including food testing labs and R&D projects) have been sanctioned under various sub-schemes of PM Kisan Sampada Yojana.
The projects, sanctioned till December 18, 2024, are valued at ₹31,830.23 crore, with a potential to leveraging private investment of ₹22,722.55 crore. Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) implements Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY), since 2016-17.
It is expected to create processing and preservation capacity of 428.04 LMT/annum, besides employment generation of 13.42 lakh and extending benefits to 51.24 lakh farmers are also targeted through these projects.
Why the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme will be hard to implement
For ensuring faster growth of the agriculture and food processing sector, the government said it is committed to further promote private and public investment in post-harvest activities including aggregation, modern storage, efficient supply chains, primary and secondary processing and marketing and branding.
The government is pushing to increase the level of processing and enhance the export of processed foods through the creation of modern infrastructure with efficient supply chain management from farm gate to retail outlet.
PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME) Yojana, a Centrally sponsored scheme being implemented by MoFPI since 2020-21, provides financial-, technical-, and business support for upgrade of micro-food-processing enterprises.
It is the first ever scheme for the unorganised sector. Under PMFME Yojana, more than 3.10 lakh SHGs with seed capital support and 1,14,388 individuals with credit linkages subsidy have been sanctioned till December 18, 2024.
The Ministry of Finance also gave updates about financial support for setting up of 50 multi-product food irradiation units in the MSME sector that was announced in the Budget for 2024-25.
Expression of Interest (EOI) was issued in August 2024 for inviting proposals for setting up of multiproduct food irradiation units under Integrated Cold Chain and Value Addition Infrastructure Scheme of PMKSY.
Twenty project proposals have been received against the EOI and are under scrutiny or evaluation as per the scheme guidelines. Further, in the update for PLI scheme for food processing industry, the Finance Ministry said 133 companies are currently covered under the programme. Investments worth ₹8,910 crore have been attracted so far. Incentives worth ₹1,084 crore have been disbursed so far in 85 eligible cases.
Published - January 18, 2025 02:51 pm IST
