Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary KS Jawahar Reddy went over the preparations being made for the establishment of a cluster for the processing of bananas in Pulivendula, Kadapa district.

According to him, the Union Ministry of MSME's Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI) will be used to establish the banana processing cluster, with an estimated cost of '121 crore.

AP Food Processing Society will be the implementing agency of the cluster and Society for Innovation and Incubation Development (SIID) will extend technical support to this cluster. The proposed cluster will be able to process 1.08 lakh metric tonnes of bananas per year. Already 9.22 acres of land in Pulivendula has been handed over to AP Food Processing Society,” he explained.

Jawahar Reddy asked the officials to initiate measures for setting up ten fibre-extracting machines from banana stems in villages in the Pulivenduala region.

Principal Secretary (Food Processing) Chiranjeev Chowdary, AP Food Processing Society CEO L Sridhar Reddy, Deputy CEO D Ramesh and others were present.