Centre formulating plans for creating dairy infrastructure, says Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh

The Central government is formulating plans for the creation of dairy infrastructure in the country, besides implementing the ongoing schemes for dairy development, Union Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh said on Wednesday.

"The National Action Plan (NAP) for dairy development envisages increasing milk production to 254.5 million metric tonne (MMT) by 2021-22 requiring an annual growth rate of 8.56 per cent, which will lead to increase in per capita availability of milk to 515 grams per day by 2021-22 addressing the nutritional requirement of the growing population," he said.

Singh, who was speaking on 'Milk Processing Infrastructure in Dairy Cooperative Sector' at the Inter-Session Meeting of Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, said that the government is making efforts to strengthen infrastructure for the production of quality milk, procurement, processing and marketing of milk and milk products through various dairy development schemes.

Some of the schemes aimed at dairy development in the country are the National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD), National Dairy Plan Phase-I (NDP-I) and Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme (DEDS).

"It has been targeted to increase the organised milk handling from present 21 per cent to 41 per cent by March 2022, while increasing cooperative share from present 10 per cent to 20 per cent," he said.

Singh disclosed that as a result of prudent policy intervention, India ranks first among the world's milk producing nations, achieving an annual production of 176.35 million tonne during 2017-18 with an annual growth rate of 6.62 per cent.

The per capita availability of milk has reached a level of 375 grams per day during 2017-18, which is more than the world average of around 294.2 grams per day. "Growth in milk production is 23.8 per cent during 2014-18 as compared to 2010-14," he said.

"The government is committed to providing greater access to rural milk producers by strengthening dairy infrastructure. Under Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF), 22 sub-projects have been approved as on January 2019 with a total estimated project cost of Rs 3,147.22 crore," he said.

These 22 sub-projects are being implemented in five states, namely, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. He said that new schemes with soft loans from the World Bank and the Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA) are being finalised for extending the benefits to a wider number of farmers.

Singh said the Central government is committed to doubling farmers' income by 2022 by providing greater access to rural milk producers by strengthening dairy infrastructure in order to help generate year-round income and gainful employment.

DIDF with a corpus of Rs 8,004 crore aims at setting up of chilling infrastructure and installation of electronic milk adulteration testing equipment at village level and creation, modernisation, and expansion of processing infrastructure and manufacturing facilities for value-added products.