To focus exclusively on comprehensive development of animal products’ sector and to harness its tremendous export potential, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has called for setting up a livestock Products’ Export Development Authority (lPEDA).
The establishment of such an Authority would help provide products needed to meet the burgeoning demand of food by the world’s growing population, said the Chief Minister in his communiqué to Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday.
Capt Amarinder insisted that an Authority of this nature would also enable the sector to address the technological constraints currently inhibiting it and to realise its true potential to provide world-class products and effectively compete in the international marketplace. While there were several such authorities in the plant sector, the animal sector in India lacked any trade promotion scheme, he added.
He pointed out the livestock sector in the country accounts for 4.11 per cent of the GDP and 25.6 per cent of the total agriculture GDP, besides 29 percent of the value of the output from total agriculture and allied sector.