The Union Cabinet on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Tuesday cleared setting up of a Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund to help improve technology and infrastructure of milk cooperatives at an outlay of ₹10,881 crore.

The major aim of the fund would be to build an efficient milk procurement system by setting up of chilling infrastructure and installation of electronic milk adulteration testing equipment, creation, modernisation and expansion of processing infrastructure and manufacturing faculties for value added products.

It is estimated that the investment would help create an additional milk processing capacity of 126 lakh litres per day, milk drying capacity of 210 tonnes per day and milk chilling capacity of 140 lakh litres.

Railway projects

The CCEA also approved creation of additional capacity in two railway segments in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and expansion of a section of a National Highway in Andhra Pradesh.

The Cabinet committee sanctioned the doubling of the 161-km long Barabanki-Akbarpur railway line in UP at a cost of ₹1,310 crore and that of the 247-km long Daund-Manmad rail track in Mahashtra at an estimated cost of ₹2,330 crore. Both the projects are expected to be completed by 2021-22.

The UP rail project will cover the districts of Barabanki and Faizabad and will benefit the entire route from Lucknow to Varanasi.

“The project had been approved in the railway budget of 2016-17,” said Manoj Sinha, Minister of State for Railways.

Another project that the CCEA gave its nod was expanding the 54-km-long Narasannapeta-Ranastalam section of NH-16 from four lane to six lane at ₹1,423 crore.

Seismic data appraisal

The Cabinet also gave its green signal to acquire 48,243 Line Kilometre (LKM) 2D seismic data for appraisal of Indian sedimentary basins where limited data is available.

The project will help in increasing the investments in domestic production of oil and gas. The project will be implemented by Oil India Ltd (OIL) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). OIL will conduct survey in North-eastern States while remaining area will be covered by ONGC.

The survey which is estimated to cost ₹2,933 crore will be carried out in 24 States and will be completed by 2019-20.

Besides, a slew of memoranda of understanding with countries such as Japan, Armenia and Morocco were also received the Cabinet nod. While the agreement with Japan was in research in silkworm and silk industry, India has agreed to extend cooperation in disaster management with Armenia and in health with Morocco.

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