___________________________
	Industry Update - Food Processing

Lower world wheat production brightened the prospects for Indian wheat exporters. This is likely to have a negative impact on the bottomline of the local food processing companies as acquisition price of wheat for milling will be higher. Mirroring this trend the food processing industry price index fell steeply by 48% between 14th July 95 and 18th March 96 while the BSE Sensex fell by 4.3% during the same period. The local wheat production scenario is however quite different from the international and a recent survey estimates a bumper production of 65.5 million tonnes this year. Due to surplus production the government has recently increased the export ceiling to 5 lakh tonnes. However the exporters couldn't capitalise the situation due to infrastructural bottlenecks which continues to daunt exports. Against an estimated 2 million tonnes only 2.5 lakh tonnes have been exported so far. This is likely to pull down the wheat prices in the near term which will bring a sigh of relief to food processing units. Thus companies like NEPC Agro, Vidiani Agrotech and Dharnendra industries will be worth watching.