By OUR STAFF REPORTER
DEHRADUN 9 Apr: Agriculture Minister Ganesh Joshi inaugurated a PMFME store (Prime Minister Micro Food Enterprise Upgradation) on Rajpur Road today to provide modern marketing platform to the products prepared by small entrepreneurs of the state, under an ambitious scheme of the Horticulture Department. This is the country’s first PMFME Store. During the function, the minister politely refused the products being gifted to him by the store and noted that as head of the department, he would use the products of the farmers only by paying their price. This would give a boost to the initiative of buying farmers’ products. The minister paid the price of the products purchased by him from his own pocket. Speaking on the occasion, the Agriculture Minister said that this scheme was a revolutionary scheme to provide market to the products of small and medium food processing entrepreneurs. Under the self-reliant India campaign announced by the Prime Minister, 35 percent government assistance was being provided to the entrepreneurs from this centrally funded scheme for the establishment of micro food industries. Apart from this, technical and financial assistance was also being provided by the government for marketing and branding of the products of the cultivators or groups under the scheme. So far, loans had been sanctioned from banks for the establishment of 19 micro food industries under PMFME scheme, it was observed. Priority is being given to one district one product under the PMFME scheme, so that by promoting horticulture in the form of a cluster, the products can be made available in adequate quantity for their marketing. Under the PMFME scheme, the Government of India has set a target of setting up 1591 units (one district, one product based) in the state of Uttarakhand by the financial year 2024-25. Under one district one product, bakery products (biscuit, rusk, bread, cake, etc) based units are being established in Dehradun district. The first store has been established at Rajpur Road, Dehradun under PMFME scheme for the sale of various horticultural products of small/marginal farmers, self-help groups, cooperative groups, farmer producer organisations, etc. The purpose is to provide market for the products of farmers/groups by branding their products to ensure fair price. Through PMFME stores, on one hand farmers would get fair price for their products while on the other hand consumers will be able to get high quality products based on food safety standards. On the lines of the store set up in Dehradun today, PMFME stores will soon be set up in both the major tourist cities of the state, Mussoorie and Nainital respectively. On this occasion local MLA, Khajan Das, Agriculture Secretary Meenakshi Sundaram, Horticulture Director HS Baweja, BJP Devsuman Mandal President Poonam Nautiyal, District Panchayat Vice President of BJP Deepak Pundir, Veer Singh Chauhan, Councillor Sanjay Nautiyal, Chunilal, Kamal Thapa, Kamli Bhatt, Sandhya Thapa, Jyoti Kotia, former Councillor Manjit Rawat and other officials were present.
