Anantapur to become Fruit Bowl of India

Vijayawada : The Andhra Pradesh government will provide policy sup-port to make Anantapur district the country’s horticulture hub with 25 per cent of the State’s GVA by 2027, said Finance Minister Payyavula Keshav at Anantapur on Wednesday.

Inaugurating the first Anantapur Horticulture Conclave, Keshav said that the district had exported more than one lakh tonnes of bananas recently to Iran through Container Corporation of India train rakes.

The need of the hour was providing end-to-end solutions for horticulture produce from nursery to marketing stage, which will make Anantapur the Fruit Bowl of the State and contribute 25 per cent to State GVA (Gross Value Addition) as part of the Swarna Andhra 2047, said the Finance Min-ister.

Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu is keen to develop Rayalaseema and Anantapur as horticulture hub and the government will take up the widening of the Handri-Neeva canal immediately during the current agriculture season so that all the 12 motors can be operated and more cultivable lands can be given irrigation water, said Keshav and prom-ised the farmers to complete the project within next 12 months.

Special Chief Secretary B Rajasekhar in his address said that there were many challenges in achieving the dream of making Anantapur as fruitful bowl of India and as major horticulture hub but the government was determined to overcome all that. The per hectare banana yield was 65 MT in Anantapur, which was very close to 70.2 MT in Tur-key. The post-harvest losses were 15 to 20 per cent, which had to be brought down to 9 per cent, he added.

The Union government and State government were giving a push to 11 priority crops in 24 clusters, out of them six - banana, dry chilli, sweet orange, tomatoes, mango and dragon fruit were in Anantapur, said Rajasekhar.

Anantapur District Collector Dr Vinod Kumar said that the aim was to make Ananta horticulture produce a global brand, for which MoUs were signed with seven companies.

Govt whip Kalava Srinivasulu, Rapthadu MLA Paritala Sunitha and MLAs Bandaru Sravani, Amilineni Surendra Babu, Jayaram and Tadipatri Municipal chairperson JC Prabhakar Reddy, CEO of AP Food Processing Sekhar Babu and members of NGOs, FPOs and horticulture farmers participated.

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M V Syam Sundar

M V Syam Sundar[email protected]