Food & Beverage News: Top Stories - Govt mulls setting up Venture Capital Fund for poultry sector

The government is considering a proposal to launch a special venture capital fund for the poultry sector. The fund would help small farmers in the sector through promotion of value addition in poultry products. The proposed fund would also have a capital subsidy. "We think that capital subsidy is better than soft or interest-free loans to farmers," an agriculture ministry official said. The proposed fund, which is under active consideration of the government, is expected to be launched shortly with a subsidy component of Rs 200 crore.

Despite a relatively large size, the poultry industry, which directly or indirectly, employs more than 20 lakh people and is worth around Rs 20,000 crore, comprises mainly small players, thus limiting their scope of value addition and expansion. Therefore, the government is considering several proposals for ensuring growth of the processing of poultry and ensures that an incident like bird flu does not adversely impact the sector.

Recently, the government approved implementation of the poultry development scheme during the 11th Plan for supporting the industry. The scheme, with a total outlay of Rs 150 crore, will focus on assistance to state poultry farms and rural backyard poultry development and poultry estates. The backyard poultry development will cover 3.85 lakh BPL families to mainly enable them to gain supplementary income and nutritional support.

The poultry industry has stressed the need for checking the volatility in feed ingredients prices that are hitting them hard. The industry consumes close to 15 million tonnes of feed annually with an estimated value of Rs 15,000 crore. Poultry in India is growing at 7-8% per annum, contributing 8% of the value of livestock and 2.5% of total agriculture products.