Boost incentives to grow agro-industrial parks – report

ABSTRACT

Agro-industrial parks are dedicated business areas that focus on processing farm produce, and on farming inputs such as fertilisers, according to the new study released by the Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness (CASA) programme The World Bank says that COVID-19 led to “severe and widespread increases in global food insecurity, affecting vulnerable households in almost every country, with impacts expected to continue into 2022 and possibly beyond”. According to data from the analysis group AgFunder, India saw funding for agri-food technology rise from US$619 million during the first half of 2020 to US$2 billion in the first half of 2021, underlining the growing potential of the sector. CASA says that agro-industrial parks are “complex, long-term projects that require strategic and policy continuity and alignment between – and contributions from – numerous stakeholders, including government bodies, financiers, private sector actors, civil society organisations and external supporters”. Since agro-industrial parks are capital-intensive projects that typically take ten years to be fully established and generate significant public and private revenues, large-scale public funds may need to be mobilised to finance the project as well as co-financing via public-private partnerships, the paper says.