Dehradun:In a noble gesture, Uttarakhand Agriculture Minister Ganesh Joshi refused agricultural produce gifted to him by the Horticulture Department and instead bought them paying the cost. Joshi inaugurated a store for the PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises Scheme store (PM FME) located at Rajpur Road. This store has been created by the Horticulture Department to provide a modern marketing platform for the products of small entrepreneurs in the state. Apart from Dehradun, very soon stores will be established in Mussoorie and Nainital.
On the occasion, the Horticulture Department gifted the products to Minister Ganesh Joshi, but the Minister refused the gifts. “I am the head of the department and I will use the products of my farmers not by gift, but by giving them their value. This initiative of mine will boost the initiative of buying farmers' products,” Joshi said.
The Agriculture Minister said that the scheme is “revolutionary” to provide a market for the products of small and medium food processing entrepreneurs. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Aatmanirbhar Bharat scheme, entrepreneurs are being benefited from 35 per cent government assistance for setting up micro food industries from this centrally funded scheme. Apart from this, technical and financial support is being provided by the government for the marketing and branding of the products of the cultivators/groups under the scheme.
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