Centre to set up food parks in NE

NEW DELHI, August 6: The Centre would give a special thrust to set up food parks in the Northeastern states to facilitate new food processing units that could value-add to the region's vast horticultural resources, Minister of State for Food Processisng Chaoba Singh said on Saturday, reports UNI. Inaugurating a seminar here on development of the Northeast, he pointed out that the food park scheme would provide a total technology and infrastructure package to important horticultural produce collection centres. Facilities for the food park would include cold storage, cold chain, warehousing, processing technology, bottling facility and effluent treatment systems. Chaoba Singh said the Northeast was ideally suited for agro-horticulture-based industries because of its vast fertile lands, diversity of crop varieties, and abundant and underutilised output. He emphasised that the hope of the region was in the planned development of the horticultural processing sector. The Minister said food processing industries would create the badly needed employment opportunities, increase rural income and facilitate a big trade base in the Northeast. He was confident that the Brahmaputra valley region could once again become the engine of India's economic activities when adequate backward and forward linkages get developed. He pointed out that the region was a land of opportunity earlier with the economic activities linked to tea, jute, rice, meat and forest produces. But today the Northeast has become an area of insurgency and violence because of the inadequate attention paid to its development, mounting unemployment and popular discontent.