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Fruits and Vegetables

Horticultural crops in India are currently grown in 12 million hectares which represents 7 percent of India's total cropped area. Annual horticultural production is estimated at 100 million metric tonnes, which is over 18 per cent of India's gross agricultural output. India is the third largest producer of fruits, after Brazil and the United States. In Vegetables, India's production is exceeded only by China.

Mango, banana, citrus, guava and apple did account for 75-80 per cent of fruit production which was approximately 37 million tones in the same period.

In 1997-98, processed fruits and vegetables exports valued Rs.5240 million. India's major exports are fruit pulps, pickles, chutneys, canned fruits and vegetables, concentrated pulps and juices, dehydrated vegetables, and frozen fruits and vegetables. This sector has attracted a total investment of Rs.75,000 million in the last six years i.e. since the initiation of the liberalization process; including foreign investment which rose from 46.9 million tonnes to about 102 million tonnes during the Period 1993-98.

The number of fruit and vegetable processing units, the installed processing capacity and production of processed items have gone up steadily in the last six years. This will be obvious from the following:-

Out of the 5198 F&VP Units registered during the year 1999, 2002 (38%) are home-scale, 1083 (20%) are cottage-scale, 834 (16%) are small-scale, 598 (12%) are large-scale and the remaining 681 units (14%) are only relevant.

The growth trend from 1994 onwards till 1997 remained upward, being 21.8% in the first year, 25.2% in the second year, and 11.76% in the third year. During the year 1997-98 the growth in this sector showed a negative trend of 4.2% over the preceding year and in the year 1998-99 there has been a marginal positive growth of 3.3%. Through the detailed reasons for this trend could be found through detailed ground level study and surveys, the apparently discernible factor to which the negative growth in the year 1997-98 could be attributed, is the levying of excise duty of 8% on F&V processed products as against zero duty in the preceding years.

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