Keeping in view the ongoing dairy farmers protest in Maharashtra and increasing domestic demand in Karnataka, Bihar and Rajasthan, the Centre has increased import duty on whey milk powder from 30 per cent to 40 per cent.
The Agriculture Ministry has also requested the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) to increase export incentive for milk and milk products and casein from 10 percent to 20 per cent to ensure minimum benefit to dairy farmers. A corpus of Rs 300 crore has been created to provide working capital loan to state cooperative federations.
Officials of Agriculture Ministry said that domestic powdered and dry whey makers now have higher protection with the Centre hiking the tariff rate on this product to 40 per cent from the existing 30 per cent. It is estimated that every month about 4,500 tonnes of whey milk powder gets imported in the country.
“Considering the present scenario, the Department has again requested to increase export incentive for milk and milk products and Casein from 10% to 20% for the benefit of farmers,” said officials adding that discussion have already started in the Ministry to fix a minimum support price for milk.
To encourage milk consumption, the ministry has been requesting various states since December 2017 to take necessary steps to encourage supply of milk and milk products through Mid-day meal scheme and anganwadi under ICDS scheme for nutritional supports to children.
“Under the scheme a corpus of Rs 300 crore in perpetuity with National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is to be kept and used for providing soft loans for working capital. Under the scheme soft loan with simple interest at rate of 5 percent is given to various cooperatives,” officials said.
Milk production rose from 20 million tonnes (mt) in 1960-61 to 53.9 mt by 1990-91. It has grown even more after liberalisation, reaching 177.4 mt in 2017-18.
Due to the protests, the milk supply is severely hit in major cities of Maharashtra. The farmers are demanding a subsidy of Rs 5 per litre of milk and waiver of goods and services tax (GST) on butter and milk powder. The protesting farmers are also demanding Rs. 5 a litre of subsidy to be deposited directly into their account similar to the practice in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.