Industry Body ACFI Seeks ₹5,000-7,500 Cr Scheme To Cut Reliance On China For Crop Protection Inputs

The government should consider a support programme of ₹5,000-7,000 crore to ensure the country's self-reliance in agrochemical technicals and intermediates and offset China's cost advantage, the industry body Agro Chem Federation of India (ACFI) said in a report on Sunday.

The report, prepared with consultancy KPMG, proposed a seven-to-eight-year programme, including two to three years for plant commissioning, followed by sustained production support.

It recommended a 5-8% incentive on incremental sales and 30-40% subsidies on industrial electricity and shared effluent treatment plants, which it said would directly counter China's operating cost edge.

The framework should have graded investment thresholds covering large companies and small firms for both greenfield and brownfield projects, the report said. It also called for capital grants for specialised research and development.

A policy should not aim at permanent protection or subsidy dependence, but at correcting identifiable ecosystem disadvantages that hurt competitiveness, it added.

The report also called for specialised agrochemical parks with shared utilities, cluster-based environmental infrastructure, long-term financing and selective backward integration in strategically important intermediates.

It sought a single digital platform for central and state approvals, with time-bound processes and clearer pathways for biological crop-protection products.

Growth cannot rely on adding manufacturing capacity alone, the report said. Despite strengths in process chemistry, formulations and regulatory execution, India needs to build capabilities in product development, biologicals, regulatory science and digital agriculture.

The report identified biologicals as a significant opportunity, citing India's biodiversity, fermentation expertise and scientific talent. But commercialisation will depend on batch consistency, formulation stability, scalable manufacturing, multi-location field validation and farmer adoption, it cautioned.

It recommended more pilot-scale facilities, field-validation networks, good-laboratory-practice labs, residue-testing infrastructure and formulation-development platforms to bridge the gap between research and commercial deployment.

"India's next phase of growth in crop protection should be anchored in strengthening ecosystem competitiveness, accelerating innovation commercialisation, enhancing supply-chain resilience and reducing structural cost disadvantages," the report said.

ACFI Chairman Rahul Dhanuka said the success of innovation would depend on turning such efforts into practical, accessible and trusted solutions for farmers.