Amul MD cautions government about dumping of dairy products

The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which markets its products under the Amul brand, has requested the government not to allow other countries to dump their dairy products in India under the Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
GCMMF announced here today that it had achieved a turnover of Rs 20,733 crore for 2014-15.
Speaking on the occasion, GCMMF Managing Director R S Sodhi expressed concerns over the possible entry of foreign players in the Indian dairy market under the FTA and registered his strong objections to such a move.
"Some countries are lobbying hard for access to the Indian dairy market through bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. We request our policy makers to ensure that dairy products are completely kept out of the ambit of FTAs with major dairy product exporting nations," Sodhi told PTI.

According to Sodhi, countries like New Zealand, Australia and European Union (EU) nations are under pressure to sell their surplus products, since they have been hit by a major meltdown in the global dairy products market recently.
"Earlier, China used to import dairy products in very large quantities from these countries. After that demand dried up, exports of these countries suffered and resulted in a major meltdown in global prices of dairy commodities," Sodhi said.
"Due to low demand, milk prices continue to fall in these countries, which are heavily dependent on dairy exports. Thus, in order to dump their surplus stocks of dairy commodities, these countries are lobbying hard to get access to the Indian dairy market," Sodhi said.

Though the central government has not included dairy products in the FTA yet, Sodhi said that GCMMF has been cautioning the government against this move.