The finance minister's announcement of extending tax holiday to promote meat and poultry processing is expected to give a boost to value addition, according to Financial Express of India.

The 200 billion rupee (INR) poultry industry has always complained about high cost of transportation and poor condition of cold storages being a hindrance to the growth of processing in the sector.

"More than 90 per cent of the broilers sold are in the wet market and only 10 per cent are sold as processed chicken," said Ricky Thaper, treasurer of the Poultry Federation of India.

The announcement is also likely to give a push to the milk processing sector. The country is the biggest producer of milk in the world, but due to rising domestic demand and inadequate infrastructure, the milk processing industry has not got a big boost.

Agricultural and Processed Food products Exports Development Authority chairman, Asit Tripathy said: "We need to take up processing of animals products for boosting our exports and value addition."

Financial Express reports that, according to APEDA, the country's exports of dairy products doubled to 69,415 tonnes with a value of INR 8.66 billion during 2007-2008 against INR 4.34 billion in 2006-2007.