Aiming to give a mega boost to dairy co-operatives at village level the Centre has formulated a Draft National Action Plan for Dairy Development with the aim of upgrading the decrepit infrastructure at the village level particularly for milk procurement and production of high valued milk products.
The government has submitted a proposal for availing loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency for ‘Dairying through Cooperatives-National Dairy Infrastructure Plan’’.
The total outlay of the proposal is Rs 20,057 crore. The proposal primarily aims to cover additional 1.28 lakh villages, 121.83 lakh additional milk producers, setting up of 1.05 Lakh bulk milk coolers at village level creating 524.20 lakh Kg milk per day capacity of milk chilling and creation of milk & milk product processing infrastructure of 76.5 lakh Kg per day capacity.
The Action Plan includes creation of milk chilling facilities including bulk milk cooling, processing infrastructure, Value added products (VAP), organisation of milk collection centres and dairy cooperative societies, milk transportation facility and marketing infrastructure to meet the requirement of increased milk handling, reads a PIB release.
Besides, the programme will modify/expand old milk and milk product plants created 20-30 years ago under Operation Flood and also create milk & milk products plants for value added products which will benefit 160 lakh existing farmers.
The fund will be routed through National Dairy Development Board for the development of the dairy sector. The proposal has been forwarded by Department of Economic Affairs to Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
JICA mission visited India during 27th February to 3rd March, 2017. A meeting with the delegation led by Mr. Tatumi Kunitake was held on 26th May, 2017 to deliberate on the observations of JICA mission.