Nagaland received 15.41 crores financial assistance for setting up cold storages (two projects) for perishable horticultural produce in the last five years.
The information was provided by the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Arjun Munda in a written reply in Lok Sabha on December 19 which disclosed the State/UT-wise details of the financial assistance. Andhra Pradesh and Telengana received the highest amount of financial assistance with an amount of 32506.88 lakhs for 70 projects followed by Gujarat with 20458.26 lakhs for 110 projects.
According to the data provided, Nagaland has five cold storages with the capacity of 8150 MT. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of cold storages with 2472 cold storages.
As per the study conducted by NABARD Consultancy Services (NABCONS) in 2015 on “All India Cold-chain Infrastructure Capacity (AICIC-2015)”, required capacity of cold storages at that time was 351.00 lakh MT against the existing capacity of 318.23 lakh MT in 2014. And as per available information, currently, there are 8653 cold storages in the country with the capacity of 394.17 lakh MT.
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According to PIB, the Government is implementing various schemes under which financial assistance is available for setting up of cold storage for perishable horticultural produce throughout the country. Though, to avoid damage to the agriculture/horticulture produce, besides Cold Storage, financial assistance is also provided for setting up of Pre-cooling Unit, Cold Room, Pack Houses, Integrated Pack House, Preservation unit, Reefer Transport, Ripening Chamber etc. under Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH). The components are demand/entrepreneur driven for which Government assistance in the form of credit linked back ended subsidy is available at the rate of 35 percent of the project cost in general areas and at the rate of 50 percent of the project cost in hilly and scheduled areas through respective State Horticulture Missions (SHMs).
