Sahai favours FDI in multi-brand retail

Food Processing Minister Subodh Kant Sahai today favoured foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail saying this will help bring down the level of agri produce wastage and attract more investment.

"FDI in retail will increase the food processing level in the country and help the sector to attract more investment," he told reporters here.

The industry ministry had earlier floated a discussion paper on allowing FDI in multi-brand retail and sought views of different stakeholders on the issue.

India is losing agri products, fruits and vegetables to the tune of Rs 1 lakh crore annually which could be cut down by more than half with the establishment of cold chains and back-end infrastructure, the Industry Ministry's discussion paper had pointed out.

"The food processing sector has already started getting FDI. The FDI in this sector has improved significantly to Rs 225 crore in the last fiscal from Rs 100 crore the year-ago.We hope this to go up further with the opening up of foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail," Sahai said.

Food Processing Industries Secretary Ashok Sinha also hailed the move, saying," It's a very strong step in the right direction. I can see linkages of our farmers with this development".

"I'm just wondering how much more investment will come in the sector following the opening up of the FDI in multi-brand retail," he added.

Sinha said the Food Processing Ministry has identified certain areas where improvement could be made to increase the level of processing like, infrastructure, raising production of processing varieties and ramping up of research support to the industry.