VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy virtually inaugurated six food processing units and laid foundation stone for another five units with the budget of Rs 1,719 crore, from the Camp Office here on Tuesday.He launched four primary vegetable and fruit processing centres in Annamayya and Chittoor districts, millet processing unit at L Kota in Vizianagaram district, onion and tomato dehydration cluster at Thadakanepalle in Kurnool district and laid foundation stones for three primary tomato processing centres in Satya Sai and Anantapur, groundnut processing unit at Dharmavaram in Satya Sai and Mondelez India Foods in Sri City.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said that the State government has been helping farmers in selling their produce for MSP through RBKs. “We are launching 421 primary processing collection centres mapped to 1,912 RBKs and 43 cold storage rooms linked to 194 RBKs,” he said, and added that there would be a total of 945 collection centres and the works for 344 cold storage rooms were in progress.
While cold storage rooms, drying platforms, collection centres, grading and segregation units should be linked to RBKs as part of primary processing, secondary processing units should be established at district level, Jagan stated. “When farmers do not get MSP for their produce, we help them through RBKs. Primary and secondary processing centres can play a proactive role in the future in facilitating better prices,” Jagan said.
The Chief Minister expressed joy even as he laid the foundation stone for Rs 1,600 crore unit of Mondelez India Foods in Sri City in Chittoor district. “I wish all success to this company, which manufactures Cadbury and Bournvita. Its readiness to invest Rs 1,500 crore in the second phase speaks of the confidence the industry has in the government. In the last four years, we have spent Rs 8,000 crore through intervention for providing MSP whenever there was price fall. AP is the only state in the country to have provided MSP even for millets and linking them with PDS through RBKs,” Jagan elaborated, while adding that the government has been giving MSP even for crops, which are not covered by the Centre.
The Chief Minister said that 32 primary and 13 secondary processing units for millets would be coming up very soon. The 7,200 MT capacity secondary millet processing unit in Vizianagaram district will help millet farmers, he said.
Agriculture minister K Govardhana Reddy, Chief Secretary KS Jawahar Reddy, Special Chief Secretary (Agriculture) Gopalakrishna Dwivedi, Principal Secretary (Marketing and Cooperation) Chiranjeevi Choudary and representatives from food processing units were present.