Govt okays dairy plan,World Bank to chip in

Upset with milk prices continuing to spiral high,the government has finalised an ambitious Rs 8,000-crore national dairy plan.

Upset with milk prices continuing to spiral high,the government has finalised an ambitious Rs 8,000-crore national dairy plan to increase per cow milk production through artificial insemination. The plan to be implemented from the next financial year with the help of the World Bank,aims at providing financial incentives through cheap loans to the dairy sector to improve quality of cattle with new national insemination programme.

Currently,the animal husbandry departments are in charge for insemination and quality of cattle and dairy sector and are tasked mostly with milk production and its marketing. We are looking to change the approach. There is no incentives for the veterinary doctors to increase production but the dairy owners have. Therefore,we want to give incentives to dairy owners rather than vets, said Abhijit Sen,Planning Commission member who oversees the sector in the planning body. The milk prices in the last two to three years have almost doubled with the plan panel finding spurt in its demand more than the production.

The demand for milk and value-added dairy products in the domestic market has been growing at over 7-8 per cent annually mainly because of rising income and its consequent growth in per capita milk consumption,farm sectors. The only way to improve production is by reducing cost of credit for the dairy sector especially for improving cattle quality, Sen said. A big component of the new plan would be for promoting research and development of semen to give birth to high milk producing cattle and also improving fodder production to meet the food needs of new breed of cows.

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The World Bank has agreed to fund the long term (15 year) project. The bank will primarily provide technical inputs on new technologies to improve milk production and implementation of global best practices. The plans phase-I will be cattle development and Phase-II will be dairy development. The commission has sought concrete proposals from the state government to benefit from the new plan. Plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia has already asked Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to provide additional incentives to make the national dairy plan a success. He said the artificial insemination to improve quality of cattle would be the focus of the project. Officials in the Agriculture Ministry have argued that growth in milk production will continue to lag at around 5 per cent per annum over the next 4-5 years,despite the governments determination to double domestic milk production by 2020.

Early this year in a bid to arrest the rising prices of milk and to ensure supplies,the government prohibited export of milk powder and casein which form 70 per cent of Indias dairy product exports. Besides,it allowed the National Dairy Development Board to import 30,000 tonnes of milk powder and 15,000 tonnes of butter and butter oil at zero duty,for the same reasons.