The Mega Food Park in Assam with an investment of around Rs.76 crores will be a notable achievement for the State as this would help transform the agriculture in the State by fostering value addition and provide the thrust for the shift of conventional farming practices into a market driven and clusterised farming thereby giving a multiplier effect to the value of agricultural produce of farmers. Government of India is providing an assistance of Rs.50 crores in this project. It is expected to leverage an investment of about Rs.200-250 crores in the form of food processing units proposed to be set up in the mega food park. It will also attract a sizeable amount of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), as FDI up to 100% is under automatic route for most of the processed food products. This is a unique project and first of its kind the State because this would be the only project which will address the needs of the farmers and will ensure a sizeable investment in the State/Region and has the potential of being the engine to drive economic growth in the region.

Around 27 processing and ancillary units coming up in this food park will process about 180,000TPA of raw materials primarily comprising of fruits and vegetables, rice and spices and will generate sizeable employment generation opportunities. It will have farm proximate 6 Primary Processing Centres (PPC) at Badarpur, Nagaon, Kajalgaon, Krishnai and Barapani. In addition farm gate level 19 Collection Centres will be linked the PPCs. This park will provide an umbrella for branding its products for increased customer acceptance. Consumers will have an option of wide range of quality products at reasonable prices in the region.

Shri Sahai also addressed a gathering of entrepreneurs of the food processing sector and others to invest in the sector as the potential in this sector is huge. The Minister also attended an “Investors' Meet” at Agartala, Tripura. The region has plenty of agri-horti produce, most of which get wasted in the supply chain due to low level of processing and lack of adequate processing as well as logistic facilities. Shri Sahai hoped that this investor's meet will attract sufficient investment in the Food Processing Sector in North-East Region.