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The creation of a fund for developing dairy processing capacities through the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) will enable milk co-operatives to create an additional 500 lakh litres of milk processing capacity.
The proposal to set up a Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund in Nabard with a corpus of ₹8,000 crore over three years will boost farmer income with increased availability of milk processing facilities. Initially, the fund will have a corpus of ₹2,000 crore.
“This is the first time such an amount has been allocated to the dairy sector under Nabard. With an ₹8,000 crore corpus, we can build around 500 lakh litres per day of additional milk processing capacities. This would mean rural income can be increased by ₹50,000 crore per annum,” RS Sodhi, Managing Director, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF), told BusinessLine .
Farmers set to benefit“Dairy is an important source of additional income for farmers. Availability of milk processing facilities and other infrastructure will benefit the farmers through value-addition. A large number of milk processing units set up under the Operation Flood Programme have since become old and obsolete,” the Finance Minister had stated in his speech.
However, the lack of a mention on coverage of private dairy players under the Nabard fund left them disheartened.
South India’s leading player Hatsun Agro believes that the infrastructure and processing push should have been given to both co-operatives and corporate dairy players.
“Most of the new milk processing capacities in the last few years have been done by private dairies. Any corporate that is expanding would benefit farmers. So, such benefits should also be extended to private players,” said RG Chandramogan, Chairman and Managing Director of Hatsun Agro Product Ltd.
“But it appears that the funding is marked only for cooperatives and not for the corporate sector. However, there is still no idea how the disbursements are going to be made,” he added.
India’s total installed milk processing capacity in the co-operatives sector is 433 lakh litres per day (lpd), while private dairies process around 700 million lpd.
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