With the fine print of the Budget emerging it is getting clear that one of the major takeaways was the unprecedented boost to the dairy sector. The govt plans to create processing capacity of an additional 500 lakh litres of milk per day- a move aimed at doubling the farmers’ income.
Welcoming the move as a game-changer GCMMF Managing Director R S Sodhi told Indian Cooperative “Allocation of Rs 8000 cr for dairy processing will expand milk processing capacities by 500 lac ltr per day and result into increased income of Rs 50000 cr per annum to milk producers”.
As of now, the country has a capacity of processing 1,000 lakh litres of milk on daily basis and out of which 668 lakh litres per day are contributed by the cooperative dairy sector. Amul commands a major share with nearly 290 lakh litres processing capacity, reports Times of India.
The Dairy Processing Infrastructure Fund with Rs 8,000 crore corpus announced in the Budget would be vested in the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard). This would be utilized over a period of three years with fund of Rs 2000 crore earmarked for the current fiscal.
“This is no small move when you realize that the fiances of dairy farmers would be infused with Rs 50 thousand crore due to processing capacity building in the country”, underlined Sodhi.
In his budgetary speech Union Finance Minister had touched on the need of creating processing units with these words “A large number of milk processing units set up under the Operation Flood Programme have since become old and obsolete,” Jaitley underlined.