Government to Consider Additional Fund for National Horticulture Board

NEW DELHI: The government will consider providing additional grant to the National Horticulture Board (NHB) for promotion of commercial horticulture and cold chain infrastructure in the country.

The assurance was given to NHB's board of directors in a meeting held on January 20 under the Chairmanship of Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh.

He informed the board that as against the budgetary allocation of Rs 206 crore in 2014-15, enhanced budget allocation of Rs 305 crore has been made to NHB in 2015-16.

The board of directors suggested a higher allocation to NHB for creating meaningful effect in the field of horticulture.

M Singh "assured the Board that efforts would be made to allocate additional grant to NHB in view of the performance shown by NHB during 2014-15", the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

The achievements made by NHB during 2015-16 were reviewed in this meeting. NHB has created a cold storage capacity of 1.50 lakh tonnes, assisted 944 hi-tech commercial horticulture projects, which include 28 reefer vans and 34 grading packing units.

The board directed NHB to further intensify the efforts so that the benefit of government schemes for the horticulture sector reaches across the country, benefiting farmers, consumers and stakeholders.

Singh decided to relax norms for area and capacity restrictions for North Eastern States and for the beneficiaries of SCP and TSP category to penetrate the benefit of commercial horticulture and cold storage schemes to the small and marginal farmers.

The relaxation includes lowering of area from present 5 acre to 2.5 acre for open field cultivation, from 2,500 sq mt to 1,000 sq mt under protected cultivation and for reefer van from 9 MT to 4 MT tonnes.

The minister also directed NHB that efforts should be made to percolate down the benefit of information technology to the farming community.

He also suggested that NHB should make immediate efforts to develop a Mobile App to capture the areawise data of projects assisted by it alongwith photographs of these projects.
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