New Delhi: India ranks first among the world’s milk producing Nations since 1998 and has the largest bovine population in the World. Milk production in India during the period 1950-51 to 2014-15, has increased from 17 million tonnes to 146.31 million tonnes. The milk production during 2015-16 is 155.49 million tonnes. About 54% of the milk produced in the country is surplus for marketing in the domestic market, of which only 20.5% is procured/processed by the organised sector being equally, shared by Cooperatives and Private dairy organizations.
To meet the growing demand which is estimated to be in the range of 200 – 210 million MT by 2021-22, the country needs to upgrade its infrastructure at the village level particularly for milk procurement and production of high valued milk products. Government is mandated to double milk producers’ income at farm level by providing rural milk producers with greater access to the organised milk processing sector. Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries has formulated a Draft National Action Plan for Dairy Development which includes creation of milk chilling facilities including bulk milk cooling, processing infrastructure, Value added products (VAP), organisation of milk collection centres/dairy cooperative societies, milk transportation facility and marketing infrastructure to meet the requirement of increased milk handling.
Government has therefore submitted a proposal for availing loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency for ‘Dairying through Cooperatives-National Dairy Infrastructure Plan’’ in line with the mandate of Government to double farmers income in next five years. The total outlay of the proposal is Rs 20,057 crores. The proposal primarily aims to cover additional 1.28 lakh villages, 121.83 lakh additional milk producers, setting up of 1.05 Lakh bulk milk coolers at village level creating 524.20 lakh Kg milk per day capacity of milk chilling and creation of milk & milk product processing infrastructure of 76.5 lakh Kg per day capacity. Besides, the programme will modify/expand old milk and milk product plants created 20-30 years ago under Operation Flood and also create milk & milk products plants for value added products which will benefit 160 lakh existing farmers. The fund will be routed through National Dairy Development Board for the development of dairy sector. The proposal has been forwarded by Department of Economic Affairs to Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
JICA mission visited India during 27th February to 3rd March, 2017. A meeting with the delegation lead by Mr. Tatumi Kunitake was held on 26th May, 2017 to deliberate on the observations of JICA mission. As per the observations of the mission; NDDB is working on modifying the proposal with a focus on poverty alleviation. The schedule of procedures involved in the programme was discussed with JICA delegation and activity-time chart has been finalized for JICA is to initiate the appraisal process at the earliest.
