Banks to provide credit line to food processing sector in Punjab

Chandigarh, August 13, 2014: The food processing sector in Punjab would get total support of banking sector with State Level Bankers Committee deciding to provide liberal credit line to food processing ventures including cold chain and reefer vehicles.
In the State Level Banker Committee meet presided over Principal Secretary Finance Vini Mahajan and Gauri Shankar Executive Director of Punjab National Bank, S.R. Ladhar, Secretary Food Processing gave a detailed presentation on food processing sector and its upcoming projects in the state. Gauri Shankar said that it was imperative for all banks to support food processing sector as per the latest policies of Reserve Bank of India that focuses on value addition of agriculture products. He asked all the banks to aggressively provide credit support to all sunshine projects of food processing sector in the state as per the policies of RBI. He said that RBI has framed special policies for financing cold chain, reefer vehicles and expansion of existing food processing units and it was duty of bankers to educate prospective entrepreneurs regarding the new attractive policy of RBI for the food processing sector and provide them helping hand till food processing units reach breakeven point.
Secretary Food Processing Ladhar advised banks to make schemes of department more popular and asked them to pursue the entrepreneurs to set up new units & modernisation of existing units in the Food Processing sector. He asked the bankers to educate entrepreneurs regarding the new policies of Punjab Government including the Grant-in-aid scheme that varies from 5 lakh to 5 crore.