Nirmala Sitharaman wants NABARD to geo-tag cold storage facilities to make them more efficient

• India's Budget 2020-21 proposes to geo-tag cold storage facilities in India.
• Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) will be mapping these facilities.
• The goal is to help storage of perishable goods become more efficient.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) will be undertaking an exercise to geo-tag India’s cold storage facilities to help them become more efficient during the budget 2020 announcement.

“India has an estimated capacity of 162 million metric tons of cold storage, reefer van facilities and so on. NABARD will undertake an exercise to map and geo-tag them,” she said during the speech.

A lot of agriculture produce in India goes to waste without sufficient storage for perishable goods. Mapping storage facilities will help NABARD direct the right resources to expand capacities where there’s a need.

Cold storage forms the most vital aspect of the post-harvest horticulture value chain, according to CRISIL. According to government statistics, there are around 7,654 cold stage warehouses in the country with more than half of the capacity being used to store potatoes. The remaining 30% is made up of multi-commodity cold storage.

The states of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal make up nearly 55-60% of over cold storage as the biggest potato producers in the country.

“In addition, we propose creating warehousing in line with warehouse development and regulatory authoring norms. Our government will provide viability gap funding for such warehouses in the bloc or thaluk,” she said.

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