Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has reiterated the State Government’s commitment to set up food processing units and improve the milling capacity by setting up state-of-the-art mills in view of the significant increase in the agricultural production in the State.
Telangana which registered production of three crore tonne food grain in the current season was expected to cross the four crore tonne mark in production as projects like Gouravelli, Malkapet, Baswapur and others had become live. The Palamuru-Rangareddy lift irrigation scheme, to be inaugurated shortly, would further augment the agriculture production in the State. In this context, the officials concerned should focus on the promotion of food processing industry and the Government was committed to set up state-of-the-art rice mills in the coming days.
The Chief Minister who held a high-level meeting with senior officials expressed concern that the Food Corporation of India was creating obstacles in procuring the food grain produced in Telangana. The FCI, he said, was creating problems for the State by not procuring paddy and rice from the State. As the production was likely to improve significantly, officials should work out modalities for exporting the produce to other countries.
Mr. Rao reiterated that the Government was committed to implement schemes/programmes keeping in view the welfare of farmers. He said the present capacity of the rice mills in the State was sufficient to process one crore tonne of food grain and wants steps to be taken to more than double the capacity in the coming days.
A committee of senior officials headed by Finance Special Chief Secretary K. Ramakrishna Rao had been constituted to examine the issue and workout modalities in this direction.
