New Delhi, February 01, 2024: In her budget speech, Hon Minister of Finance Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman informed the Parliament that India is the largest producer of milk in the world. She mentioned a comprehensive programme for supporting dairy farmers will be formulated. Efforts are already on to control foot and mouth disease. India is the world’s largest milk producer but with low productivity of milch-animals. The programme will be built on the success of existing schemes such Rashtriya Gokul Mission, National Livestock Mission, and Infrastructure Development Funds for dairy processing and animal husbandry.
Amul welcomes this support to the dairy industry of the country. India contributes to 24% of the total milk production of the world and at the current rate of growth and the world dairy situation, India will contribute to one third of the total milk production in the world in a decade. The proposed comprehensive program for supporting dairy farmers will help India achieve the dream of becoming the “dairy to the world.”
The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has today approved the continuation of Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF) to be implemented under Infrastructure Development Fund (IDF) with an outlay of Rs.29,610.25 crore for another three years up to 2025-26.
The scheme will incentivize investments for Dairy processing and product diversification, Animal Feed Plant, Breed multiplication farm, Animal Waste to Wealth Management (Agri-waste management) and Veterinary vaccine and drug production facilities.
Government of India will provide 3% interest subvention for 8 years and the Dairy Cooperatives will also avail benefits for modernization, strengthening of the dairy plants.
Further, Hon. Minister also announced that the Government will further promote private and public investment in post-harvest activities including aggregation, modern storage, efficient supply chains, primary and secondary processing and marketing and branding for ensuring faster growth of the food processing sector.
It may be noted that Amul has announced investments of Rs 11500 crores over the next 2-3 years for all round expansion of its dairy processing infrastructure.
Hon Minister also announced the phased mandatory blending of compressed biogas (CBG) in compressed natural gas (CNG) for transport and piped natural gas (PNG) for domestic purposes will be mandated. Further, financial assistance will be provided for procurement of biomass aggregation machinery to support collection. This will support Amul’s initiative to promote circular economy by collecting dung from its farmers through the cooperative model, process it into compressed biogas (CBG) and bio fertilizer and thereby benefiting the farmers through additional income from dung, the economy by reducing imports of fuel and fertilizer and also supporting the plant. Amul has plans to set up 100 such CBG fuel pumps in the next couple of years across Gujarat.
As our Prime Minister firmly believes, we need to focus on four major castes. They are, ‘Garib’ (Poor), ‘Mahilayen’ (Women), ‘Yuva’ (Youth) and ‘Annadata’ (Farmer). Their empowerment and well-being will drive the country forward. Cooperatives are a powerful institutional mechanism to connect all these four and provide them sustainable benefits over a long period of time as the Amul model has successfully demonstrated. We believe that the initiatives of new Ministry of Cooperation shall help promote this cause for the betterment of all these four major castes through the several measures being taken for strengthening of cooperatives across the country.
