Focused Skill Development, a requisite for growth of Food Processing Industry

The recent announcement by the Ministry of Food Processing Industry (MoFPI) to train and skill the youth in the food processing domain is a commendable step towards achieving the goal of making India a top food processing hub of the world. Despite the production strengths, climatic advantages and availability of cheap labour force, there are a major challenges that have stood underway the potential development of the sector. The food processing sector, amongst the largest industries in India, contributes nearly 10% to the agricultural GDP and around 9% to the manufacturing sector. Unlike farm level skill development, Food Processing sector requires a more intensive capacity building accompanied by specific skill sets.

ASSOCHAM lauds the Government's recent announcement to train youth with support of National Skill Development Corporation in consultation with the industry, a prominent step towards meeting the skilled manpower requirement of the food processing sector. The chamber proposes stern focus on operational strategies in training to take the skill development initiative in the right direction and recommends the following:

Targeted training programs for different segments of food processing industry like dairy, confectionery, frozen foods, beverages that enable improved learning outcomes among the trainees.

While there is utmost need to map and identify the job roles and their respective skill set requirement, training needs assessment from the 'trainee/employer perspective' to be made pre-requisite for designing and implementing the training programs.

Synergy between public private partnerships including universities to be effectively used, harvesting the domains of expertise of various stakeholders. For example, the research expertise of the research centers & universities, the commercialization & market orientation methods of the private sector may be synergized for training effectiveness.

ASSOCHAM believes that augmenting knowledge and skill levels of the workforce, and youth in particular, is essential to enhance resource productivity, boost innovation, manage finance, mitigate risks and improve decision making ability.

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