The much-awaited ₹8,004-crore Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund, set up under the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) to support modernisation of the dairy sector, now stands operationalised.
The first instalment of ₹440 crore was handed over by the Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh to the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) Chairman Dilip Rath at an event in New Delhi on Thursday.
The fund will be distributed to six different projects — Dakshina Kannada Milk Union (Udupi); Kolar- Chikhballarpur Milk Union ( Kolar); Mysore Milk Union (Mysore); Karnataka Milk Federation (Channarayapatna); Karnataka Milk Federation (Ramnagar) and Ropar Milk Union (Ropar). The initiative is expected to achieve an investment of ₹10,000 crore in the dairy sector in three years viz; 2017-18 to 2019-20.
The DIDF is also aimed at bringing more dairy farmers into organised milk marketing through co-operatives by offering them better price realisation.
Currently, co-operatives processed about 10 per cent of the total milk produced. Milk processing capacity of the cooperatives is expected to increase by 32 million litres per day through the implementation of DIDF. In addition, bulk milk chilling capacity will be enhanced by 14 million litres per day.
NDDB and National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) are the two agencies roped in to channelise the funding support to viable dairy co-operatives. Nabard will fund these entities at concessional rate of interest.
Maintaining that dairy activity has been growing fast, Singh said that per capita milk availability has gone substantially up to 377 grams per day.
He reiterated that only more value addition in dairy sector will ensure more income to the dairy farmers. DIDF will help about 95 lakh dairy farmers across 50,000 villages.
Quoting the latest Nabard All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (NAFIS), Harsh Kumar Bhanwala, Chairman, Nabard, said that 51 per cent of agricultural households own milch animals. “Milk production has been growing around 6.5 per cent each year and we need to create infrastructure to handle the production and process the same,” he said.