India’s Commerce & Industry Minister Announced Launch of IndusFood

Terming IndusFood-II as a major event, the Commerce & Industry minister said during a pre-launch  announcement made  in a Press Conference related to the grand event that IndusFood would greatly help both farmers and exporters of F&B products. Saying that he would have very much liked to attend IndusFood but some pressing commitments were not allowing him to do so, Mr. Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu urged all stakeholders to attend the event to ensure its grand success. Calling it a major event, Prabhu said, “We’re actually promoting the F&B industry in a big way and that is also going to help the farmers. Ultimately, what they produce is used to make other products. So, it’s a very major event.”

He added that with more than 700 overseas buyers and 500 domestic exhibitors of F&B products, IndusFood is going to change the dynamics of foreign trade. “Through IndusFood, instead of Indian exporters going out to sell their products, the international buyers are coming to India,” he remarked.

Also billed as ‘World Food Supermarket’, IndusFood  which took place in India Exposition Mart, Greater Noida on January 14-15, 2019 was broadly divided into 15 products such as sweets, confectionary, dairy, dry fruits, fruits and vegetables, Indian ethnic food snacks, meat, poultry, seafood, non-alcoholic beverages, oil & oil seeds and organic & health food.

In continuation of the theme, Mr. Prabhu also shared some details on the recent meeting of the Council of Trade Development and Promotion (CTDP) where, along with state governments, industry organisations and industry chambers are also involved. The council deliberated on how various stakeholders could work together to promote trade and commerce within the country as well as outside. Here the minister referred to an earlier meeting with the states where implementation of policy with regard to agricultural export and appointment of nodal agents to oversee that initiative was discussed.

Welcoming the change in mindset, Mr. Prabhu observed how from agriculture export earlier being considered as the sole responsibility of the central government, various state governments were now working towards the common goal of trade promotion.

On being quizzed about any major demands made by the states in terms of improving infrastructure, Mr. Prabhu responded: “Infrastructure is an issue even for agricultural export. We have already discussed that and we will work together with states to develop it because we cannot have agricultural export without developing infrastructure for which clusters have already been identified for particular products.” He reiterated how he had taken the issue to the Union Cabinet, which had put its seal of approval on the concept of work clusters. “We have worked out complete details with states that are asking for support and we’ll be more than glad to support them,” he added.

He also mentioned the government considering to provide some transport subsidy to states for significant agricultural export. “All the states are very actively engaged in this and we’re trying to take this forward,” he said. The minister also informed about his meeting with officials from the Ministry of Finance along with the export organisations to resolve issues pertaining to export licensing, duty drawbacks and customs.

IndusFood-II is essentially about emerging brands, value-added and organic products from India. Supported by the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, IndusFood is the flagship global trade show to maximise business opportunities for F& B industry. The event has been developed as the World Supermarket, to enable the rest of the world meet its F&B requirements from India. While during IndusFood-I, the focus was on creating an interaction of global buyers with the Indian commodity exporters, IndusFood-II brought international wholesale buyers, big sized food chains and governmental bodies from about 80 countries, and enabling them to decide which of the over 500 exhibitors they would like to meet. Although commodity buying still took place, during IndusFood-II the emphasis was also on identifying emerging brands from among F&B products that could interest the world market.