Agriculture Minister Vidya Sagar said the committee would be headed by him. Talking to the mediamen here today, the minister said a focus needed to be extended to bring larger number of the projects in the external field so that advanced technologies pertaining to implements pre-harvest and post-harvest management stage and processing could be effectively utilised for value addition.

The minister said major area of reform with regard to the hill regions should be the revision of cost norms. Such revision programmes would need to be established by the Centre in consultation with the state.

The agriculture minister said that the state was almost self-sufficient in the production of foodgrains. He said this year target of foodgrains was 16.05 lakh tonnes. He said the state was exporting one lakh tonnes of maize Replying to questions, the minister said because of the change in food habits and increase in tourist traffic in the state, there had been shortfall in the production of wheat and rice.

The minister said the state government had taken a number of steps to improve the quality of ginger so that if could regain the status of cash crop. Vidya Sagar said the government had sent six projects to the Government of India for approval which would be funded totally by the Centre which include vegetables production including off season vegetables, andwater shed projects and a project pertaining to the strengthening of infrastructure.