FDI in food processing touches USD 2.15 billion

The food processing industry attracted foreign direct investment (FDI) worth USD 2.15 billion between during the April-October period of this fiscal and the government expects higher inflows to improve further this fiscal, a senior government official said here today.
"We see significant increase in FDI in the food processing sector. The average FDI inflow was USD 117 million for 11 years ending FY12 and USD 401 million in FY13. During the April-October period, it jumped to USD 2.15 billion.
"We expect it to go up further in the remaining period of the fiscal," Union Ministry for Food Processing Joint Secretary J P Meena told PTI on the sidelines of the 'India Food Service Forum 2014' expo here.

"We see more investment from Fortune 500 companies in the food processing industry," Meena said, adding that major multinationals like Nestle, PepsiCo, Coke, Kellogg's, Heinz, Perfetti, GlaxoSmithKline, Ajinomoto, Nissin Met, Le Bon are already present and many others are in the pipeline," he said.
Besides domestic giants like ITC, Dabur, Godrej, Britannia and Parle, others like Reliance, Bharti Group, Tatas, Wipro and Thapars are also entering the field, he said.
The food processing sector is growing annually at 7.2 per cent as compared to 3.9 percent in agriculture for the last five years ending FY13, he said. It is growing at a faster rate than agriculture and investment in this sector is also increasing annually at 21.66 per cent, he said.

The government has also allocated USD 28 billion for infrastructure development like the mega food park scheme, integrated cold chain scheme and abattoirs modernisation scheme during the 12th Plan.
This is in addition to USD 18.50 billion allocated to the national mission on food processing, USD 3 billion to strengthen institutions and skill development, USD 2.9 billion for food safety as well as R&D, besides USD 7.5 billion for technology upgradation in the 12th Plan.