Government to help rural entrepreneurs in creating small warehouses

MUMBAI: The government plans to encourage rural entrepreneurs to create smalland mid-size warehousing facilities with the support of rural banks to help minimise food loss from lack of proper warehousing infrastructure.

“A large part of a Rs5,000-crore fund in this budget will focus on creating small and mid-size warehousing capacity of 153 lakh tonne by 2014 across India under the Private Entrepreneurs’ Guarantee Scheme (PEGS),” says Prof K V Thomas, the minister of state for Agriculture, Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution.

On March 16, the finance minister in his Budget for 2013 proposed to investRs 20,000 crore on rural infrastructure development, from which Rs 5,000 crore will be spent on establishing warehouses for food grains and vegetables. Small entrepreneurs will be invited to set up warehouses to store food crops.

Under the PEGS scheme, each entrepreneur will earn an ensured amount fixed by Food Corporation of India (FCI) per tonne of storage capacity.