GS Paper 2
Topics Covered: Food processing and related industries in India- scope and significance, location, upstream and downstream requirements, supply chain management.
Context:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced this new national initiative on palm oil production to help increase farm incomes.
- The scheme involves investment of over Rs 11,000 crore.
Aims and Objectives of the scheme:
- Achieve self-reliance in edible oil.
- Harness domestic edible oil prices that are dictated by expensive palm oil imports.
- To raise the domestic production of palm oil by three times to 11 lakh MT by 2025-26.
Key features of the scheme:
- The special emphasis of the scheme will be in India’s north-eastern states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands due to the conducive weather conditions in the regions.
- Under the scheme, oil palm farmers will be provided financial assistance and will get remuneration under a price and viability formula.
Benefits and significance of the scheme:
It is expected to incentivise production of palm oil to reduce dependence on imports and help farmers cash in on the huge market.
Need for such schemes:
- India is the largest consumer of vegetable oil in the world. Of this, palm oil imports are almost 60% of its total vegetable oil imports.
- In 2016- 2017, the total domestic consumption of palm oil by India was 9.3 million MT, with 98.97 percent of it imported from Malaysia and Indonesia. This means India was producing only 1.027 per cent of its requirement.
- Also, in India, 94.1 per cent of its palm oil is used in food products, especially for cooking purposes. This makes palm oil extremely critical to India’s edible oils economy.
- Palm oil is currently the world’s most consumed vegetable oil.
- It is used extensively in the production of detergents, plastics, cosmetics, and biofuels.
- Top consumers of the commodity are India, China, and the European Union (EU).
Insta Curious:
Did you know that the NMEO-OP’s predecessor was the National Mission on Oil Seeds and Oil Palm, which was launched at the fag end of the UPA government’s tenure and later merged with the National Food Security Mission?
InstaLinks:
Prelims Link:
- Key features of the scheme.
- Benefits.
Mains Link:
Discuss the significance of the scheme.
Sources: the Hindu.
