Government working with ADB to create grading, rating framework for warehouses and cold chains: DPIIT Joint Secretary

India is developing a grading and rating standards benchmark for warehouses and cold-chain facilities with the Asian Development Bank, Pankaj Kumar, Joint Secretary, DPIIT, said on Tuesday at FICCI.

Addressing the FICCI’s third Logistics, Warehousing and Cold Chain Summit, Kumar said that the government had yet to decide who should regulate the ratings. Options include a government body or self-regulation by industry associations. Graded facilities could gain easier access to incentives and credit.

The rating exercise follows two sets of warehouse standards and guidelines that DPIIT released recently. The department is also working with states to bring warehousing and cold chains into state logistics policies. It is helping them prepare city logistics plans that cover warehouses, dark stores and cold storage.


DPIIT’s logistics division is also drafting guidelines for multimodal logistics parks (MMLPs). Warehousing and cold chains take up about 70 per cent of the area in MMLPs, Kumar said. The guidelines are expected to promote value-added services such as labelling, packaging, redistribution and digitalisation.

Financing against stored produce is growing fast. Shanti Lal Jain, member of the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA), said commodities worth about Rs 12,419 crore were pledged against electronic negotiable warehouse receipts (e-NWRs) last year, up 43 per cent. Loans against e-NWRs rose by the same margin to about Rs 5,700 crore. In the first five months of the current year, pledges have crossed Rs 6,000 crore and loans Rs 3,000 crore. The government has set a lending target of Rs 8,000 crore for the year, implying 40 per cent growth.

About 7,800 warehouses are now registered with the regulator, with a combined capacity of 6 crore metric tonnes, roughly 30 per cent of national capacity. Registration remains voluntary. WDRA has raised its notified commodities to 246, covering food grains, pulses, oil, seeds, spices, horticulture, cash crops and even non-agricultural commodities; 61 commodities were added last year.

“Unregistered storage can never be banked,” Jain said. He called on industry to invest in registered, scientific capacity closer to farm gates and to use government credit guarantees. The aim, he said, was to move farmers from distress sales to discretionary ones.

States are competing for the investment. Anisha Shrivastav, Executive Director of Madhya Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation (MPIDC), said the state’s Logistics Policy 2025 offered a 30 per cent incentive on fixed capital investment for projects on land parcels of 25 acres or more. It also provides up to Rs 5 crore for external development. A 255-acre multimodal logistics park has been developed in Indore as a public-private partnership, and the state has set aside a further 110 acres in Jabalpur.