Why in news:

• The government of Himachal Pradesh is giving a major boost to development of horticulture in the state in order to increase farmers’ income and to give a push to the economy of the hill state.

Key Points:

• In this regard, Head of the Asian Development Bank's Project Readiness Financing Mission team Sunae Kim who is also the team leader of the Himachal Pradesh Shiva Project, met Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister and briefed him about the objectives and scope of the mission.
• On this occasion, the Chief Minister announced that 257 clusters had been selected for the first phase of the Rs 1,292 crore HP Shiva main project. Target has been set to benefit about 15,000 farmers and orchardists by setting up orchards in an area of 4,000 hectares.
• The HP Shiva main project would be implemented in 5 years and sub-tropical fruit-crop gardens will be set up in about 400 clusters on a total of 6 thousand hectares of land in two phases.
• Under this project, Asian Development Bank mission finalized Project Readiness Financing for Rs. 75 crore for pilot testing of four fruits namely guava, litchi, pomegranate and citrus fruits in 17 clusters of 12 development blocks of four districts covering total of 200 hectares of area.
• For the main project, 10000 hectares of land has been identified in 28 development blocks of seven districts of Sirmaur, Solan, Una, Bilaspur, Hamirpur, Kangra and Mandi, which will benefit more than 25,000 farmer families. This is an important step towards realizing the vision of self-reliant Himachal Pradesh.
• As part of the project, the state government has stressed the plantation of various other fruit plants which can be grown in the low-lying areas so that the fruit diversity in the area could also be increased.
• Under the HP Shiva Scheme, horticulture development would be done on the basis of seed to market concept.  The goal of the HP Shiva project is to connect maximum number of unemployed youth and women with horticulture. Assistance and facilities ranging from suitable saplings to mass marketing would be provided to the orchardist for developing new orchards.
• Shiva Scheme would be implemented in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a total cost of Rs. 975 crore.  The government’s contribution in this project is Rs. 195 crore. So far, the Himachal government has provided Rs. 48.80 crore for the implementation of the HP Shiva pilot project, out of which Rs. 37.31 crore has been spent.