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Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) in collaboration with the Indo-Canadian Business Chamber (ICBC) and the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) organized a bilateral conference on collaboration in infrastructure, cold chains, agriculture and agri-foods at the PHD House in Delhi on January 7.
The conference was attended from the Canadian side by Hon. Bal Gosal, Minister of State for Sports; Hon. Tim Uppal, Minister of State for Multiculturalism; Dr. Asha Seth, Senator, Senate of Canada; Hon. Joe Daniel, Member of Parliament; His Excellency Stewart Beck, High Commissioner of Canada to India; Mr. Ray Chan, Investment Attraction Manager, India and South Asia, Government of Saskatchewan; Mr. Sohail Saeed, Director, Business Development, City of Brampton.
From the Indian side, the participants included Dinesh Rai, chairman, Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority; Pawanexh Kohli, Chief Advisor National Centre for Cold Chain Development; Kunal Agrawal Director Bratlle foods; Vinod Asthana, MD, Central Railside Warehouse Company, Government of India; SK Sharma, Managing Director, Global Agri Systems.
Naval Bajaj, President, ICCC; Nadira Hamid, CEO, ICBC and Sharad Jaipuria, President PHDCCI represented the host organizations of the conference.
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The inaugural session of the conference was on Canadian and Indian governent’s role in promoting agriculture trade. Speakers at the session on emphasized on the growing significance of the agriculture and the agri-food sectors to the bilateral trade, and the measures that both the governments have undertaken to promote and enhance trade. The bilateral trade in the sector is estimated to be over 583 million Canadian dollars
The main component of the bilateral trade comprises India’s import of food grains – peas and lentils. Canada supplies around 50% of India's pulse needs and is the largest supplier of yellow peas; and potential of the food processing and the cold chain sectors in India, and the opportunities available for the Canadian investors in these sectors.
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Among the points that emerged during the discussion were:
- More focus on agriculture and especially food processing and cold chain management
- Tremendous growth potential especially considering bilateral trade target of $15b is to be achieved within the next couple of years
- While technology transfer has limited applicability given the differences in the farm sizes, the non-traditional subsectors will gain prominence
- Trade should be enhanced through the Canadian Trade Commissioner’s Services even while CEPA is being negotiated
- Food retail as a sector has immense growth potential in Canada
- In India, food processing industry ranks fifth in terms of production, growth, consumption, and export, and accounts for 19% of India’s industrial workforce
- The sector’s total output stood at US $93.1b in 2010, it accounted for nearly 7.5% of aggregate gross value added of major industries during that year
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In the Panel Discussion 1 on Regulatory aspects of agriculture trade, the participants discussed the bottlenecks that India is facing in developing the sector and how the regulatory mechanism is being used to promote the food processing and the cold chain sectors.
The Panel 2 discussion on the new directions in cold chain and food distribution system threw up the following ideas on the promotion of the subject
- Scope for developing the entire chain – not just piecemeal
- Storage is just one aspect of the chain
- Different states in India have different levels of opportunities; each state requires a different strategy
- Tremendous opportunities in the Indian Railways sector
- Growing opportunities in agriculture technology, including dry-land farming, injection of seeds in the land, so that the moisture is not lost in ploughing the land
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