Food Processing Industry, Petroleum, Chemicals and Petro-chemicals & Information Technology - Indian Budget 2006 – 2007 (63 - 65)

Food Processing Industry

63. Recognizing the enormous benefits that the food processing industry can bring to agriculture and job creation, and to consumers, food processing will be treated as a priority sector for bank credit. NABARD will create a separate window with a corpus of Rs.1,000 crore for refinancing loans to the sector, especially for agro-processing infrastructure and market development. Government will also set up the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management. The Paddy Processing Research Centre at Thanjavur will be developed into a national-level institute.

Petroleum, Chemicals and Petro-chemicals

64. Petroleum, chemicals and petro-chemicals (PC&P) is a sector with potential for large investment and employment. In order to promote investment in this sector, Government has set up a Task Force to facilitate the development of large PC&P Investment Regions. World class developers and investors are being associated with the Task Force. It is expected that in 2006-07 at least three such Investment Regions will be developed.

Information Technology

65. With the spread of Information Technology (IT) and IT Enabled Services (ITES), the time is ripe to make India a preferred destination for the manufacture of semi-conductors and other high technology IT products including Wafer; Assemble, Test and Manufacture of Semi-conductors; Flat LCD/OLED/Plasma Panel Displays; and Storage Devices. To achieve this goal the Ministry of Information Technology will announce a policy shortly. I propose to use the existing vehicles of viability gap funding and the India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited (IIFCL) to create a window to provide equity participation and/or viability gap funding to the new ventures. The window will be open for three years in order to accelerate investment.