Assuring full co-operation to the milk producers Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said that his government was committed to provide good quality milk to the people and therefore would extend all possible help to the milk producers and farmers.
“Uttar Pradesh is number one in milk production. No other government has ever thought of increasing milk production. We opened the doors for milk producers like Amul and our own Parag plant is being modernized,” Yadav told a group of milk producers who met him here on Sunday.
He said that UP’s economy is agrarian based and Samajwadi Party Government has advocated diversification by asking villagers to go for dairy development. Though UP is the largest milk producing state in the country, the average productivity of the milch animals is low as compared to other states due to low availability of the high yielding germ plasm animals in the state. In order to overcome the low availability of the high yielding germ plasm animals, the state government has launched interest free Kamdhenu scheme which envisages establishment of dairy units with animals procured from outside the state, he said.
Kamdhenu Yojna provided for 100 animals both cows and buffalos where 75 percent loan is provided by the banks and 25 percent margin money is to be invested by the beneficiary as margin money.
Under the three schemes as many as 1, 67,500 or little over 1.67 lakh more animals are to be purchased. Under Kamdhenu Yojna 325 units are to be set up, 1,500 under Mini Kamdhenu and 2,500 units under Micro Kamdhenu Yojna. This is a onetime scheme and one time target for completing the first two schemes is all set to be achieved within the current financial year 2015-16 and Micro Kamdhenu Yojna will be completed by March 2017.
According to Kamdhenu Yojna cell, so far over 56,000 milch animals both cows and buffalos have been procured from outside the state under the three schemes. For the Kamdhenu 13,000 animals, 33,000 for Mini Kamdhenu and 2,500 for micro Kamdhenu Yojna.
Besides Political pension minister Rajendra Chaudhry proprietor of VRS Foods Pvt. limited Rajendra Singh, MD of Gyan Milk Ajay Kumar Agarwal, MD Bhole Baba Industries Harishankar Agarwal, MD Sterling Agro India laxmi Narain and MD Namaste India Manoj Gyanchandani were present in that meeting.