Agri sector didn’t see reforms for 25 years: NITI Aayog Member

New Delhi, Oct 13 (IANS) NITI Aayog Member Ramesh Chand on Friday said while every sector of the Indian economy had undergone some sort of transformation in the last 25 years, the agriculture sector was largely ignored.

"In last 25 years, particularly since the beginning of economic reforms in 1991, we have seen some sort of transformation in almost all sectors of Indian economy except agriculture," he said at an event here.

"If you look at agriculture, except some pockets here and there, the agriculture sector largely did not see any kind of transformation even with the process of economic reforms," Chand added.

He said the reason behind this was that regulatory reforms had been very slow, patchy and diluted when it comes to agriculture.

Because of this, Chand added, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the NITI Aayog "to do something to bring about transformation in agriculture and doubling of farmer income".

He said that the NITI Aayog had prepared a comprehensive reform agenda to achieve these goals covering marketing and other areas.

"The main emphasis in reforms in agricultural marketing was to facilitate and incentivise the private sector to enter the area of agriculture marketing; to create a favourable environment for private sector in processing, cold storage, logistics and other kind of infrastructure; and even direct purchase by private sector," Chand said.

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