Need for food park in Malwa region: Khudian to Union Food Processing Industries Minister

Punjab agriculture and farmers welfare and food processing minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian on Friday urged Union Food Processing Industries Minister Chirag Paswan to set up a mega food park at Bathinda to enhance agricultural productivity, create employment opportunities and increase the farmers’ income.

During a meeting with the union minister in New Delhi, Khudian, who was accompanied by food processing principal secretary Rakhee Gupta Bhandari, apprised him that Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann has envisioned to increase farmers’ income by value addition to their produce, besides creating employment opportunities for the youth. Highlighting the need for a mega food park in Malwa region, he said this mega food park will go a long way to leverage perishable agricultural produce by manufacturing processed food products for domestic as well as export markets. He offered that adequate land will be provided by the state government for setting up the park.

Khudian also impressed upon Paswan to intervene for the release of 4th installment of grant-in-aid for Ladhowal mega food park, besides awarding a food testing laboratory for Amritsar with requisite accreditation as food processing enterprises, traders, punjab Rice millers association and aachar-murabba association must get their food products tested from Mohali or Delhi. Agriculture department special chief secretary KAP Sinha and senior officials of the food processing department and ministry were also present in the meeting.