Mumbai: The government wants private sector to invest in the country''s agriculture sector by developing cold chains, warehousing and transport facilities, and thereby helping to remove infrastructure bottlenecks that hamper farm sector growth.

"We hope that the private sector would supplement public investment in agro-exports sector, pitching in greater investments than ever before," commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath told the parliamentary consultative committee.

Infrastructure remained a major problem confronting the Indian agriculture in general exports in particular, he said.

"There is a need to strengthen cold chain network, transportation and warehousing to ensure that wastage is minimised and the agricultural produce meets high quality standards," Nath was quoted in an official release.

Meanwhile, the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Exports Developments Authority (APEDA) has proposed Rs2,500 crore investment to set up 12 centres across the country for handling agro-perishable exports.

The centres would come up at Chandigarh, Muzaffarpur, Agra, Kolkata, Guwahati, Mumbai, Nasik, Pune, Nagpur, Raipur, Hyderabad and Dharmapuri, APEDA chairman K S Money said.

The meeting also discussed the need for setting up quality assurance laboratories in the country whose certifications would b accepted globally for export purposes.

The Spices Board has proposed to set up regional quality control laboratories at Guntur, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi.

The government, Nath said, would give a major thrust to the export of organic agro-products and take up the issue of greater market access for agricultural products with other countries.

"India has a huge potential for organic farming and exports of organic agro-products will be promoted in a big way by the government," he said. With Indian mangoes gaining market access in Japan and the US, Nath said there was a need to further expand agro-trade to overseas markets.

He said Australia and New Zealand were yet to open their markets to Indian mangoes, while Russia was not allowing the import of egg powder and meat.

"There are other commodities like gherkins and floriculture products that face certain barriers in the EU. The ministry is committed to engage with other countries and agencies to remove the current impediments to achieve higher agricultural exports to these markets," he said.

Nath also highlighted the need to improve overall agricultural productivity since there was an increasing domestic demand for agricultural products and exports are not possible unless the domestic demand is met. The minister appreciated the need to set up laboratories for certification of exports and reiterated the need to develop organic farming. He also noted that the increased competition from different countries such as Vietnam and Sri Lanka in tea necessitated the need to devise a strategy to deal with the increasing competition in this sector.

Nath said he has sought prime minister Manmohan Singh''s intervention for speedy notification of service tax waiver for exporters. "I have written to Prime Minister on this issue and it is expected that notification for this is likely to be issued shortly," Nath said.

Agricultural exports from the country have grown 9.4 per cent annually during 2001-06. Total agro-exports in 2005-06 stood at Rs42,362 crore.