OREANDA-NEWS. March 11, 2015. A total 42 Mega Food Parks (MFPs) have been sanctioned by the Government for setting-up in the country. Out of these, 21 Mega Food Parks have been accorded final approval and are at various stages of implementation, while 4 Mega Food Parks are progressing towards meeting the conditions for final approval.

The Scheme of Mega Food Parks is aimed at providing modern infrastructure facilities along the value chain from farm gate to the market with strong backward and forward linkages. It is expected to facilitate the efforts to increase the level of processing of agricultural and horticultural produce, with particular focus on perishables, in the country and thereby to check the wastage. The Scheme has a cluster based approach based on a hub and spokes model. It includes creation of infrastructure for primary processing and storage near the farm in the form of Primary Processing Centres (PPCs) and Collection Centres (CCs) and common facilities and enabling infrastructure at Central Processing Centre (CPC). The PPCs are meant for functioning as a link between the producers and processors for supply of raw material to the Central Processing Centres. CPC has need based core processing facilities and basic enabling infrastructure to be used by the food processing units setup at the CPC. The minimum area required for a CPC is 50 acres. The scheme is demand-driven and would facilitate food processing units to meet environmental, safety and social standards.

Mega Food Park project is implemented by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which is a Body Corporate registered under the Companies Act. State Government/State Government entities/Cooperatives applying for setting up a project under the scheme are not required (w.e.f 10.02.2014) to form a separate SPV. Implementation period of a Mega Food Park project is 30 months. The financial assistance for Mega Food Park is provided in the form of grant-in-aid @ 50% of eligible project cost in general areas and @ 75% of eligible project cost in NE Region and difficult areas (Hilly States and ITDP areas) subject to maximum of Rs. 50 crore per project. It is expected that on an average, each project will have around 30-35 food processing units with a collective investment of Rs 250 crores that would eventually lead to an annual turnover of about Rs 450-500 crores and creation of direct and indirect employment to the extent of about 30,000 persons.

It has been experienced during implementation of the Scheme of Mega Food Parks that the major challenges being faced by the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) in implementation of the Mega Food Park projects, include acquiring contiguous land of 50 acres or more in the name of SPV, obtaining term loan from the Banks, difficulties in obtaining various statutory clearances from the State Government Departments/Agencies, timely contribution of equity by the promoters, lack of cohesiveness amongst the promoters etc. Ministry has made various amendments in the scheme and its guidelines from time to time to address these challenges to improve the pace of implementation of MFPs.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Food Processing Industries, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha here today.