The first installment of Rs 440 crore, out of an outlay of Rs 10881 crore for 2017-18 was given to the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) on Thursday by the Union Minister Radha Mohan Singh. The occasion was the inauguration ceremony of Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) in New Delhi.
The Union Agriculture Minister said that with this scheme, 95,00,000 farmers in about 50,000 villages will be benefitted. In addition to this, many skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers will get employment, directly and indirectly.
Additional milk processing capacity of 126 lakh litre per day, milk drying capacity of 210 MT per day, milk chilling capacity of 140 lakh litre per day shall be created. Under this scheme, milk cooperatives will be provided financial assistance of Rs 8004 crore in the form of a loan at 6.5% interest, which will be reimbursed over a period of 10 years.
The government has also given a provision of interest subsidy on loans. Till now, 15 sub-projects with total approved outlay of Rs 1148.61 crore pertaining to States namely, Karnataka (Rs. 776.39 crore – 5 sub-projects), Punjab (Rs.318.01 crores – 4 sub-projects) and Haryana (Rs. 54.21 crore – 6 sub-projects) have been sanctioned so far.
Shri Singh informed that implementation of the World Bank-funded National Dairy Plan Phase-I scheme is also being done by the NDDB through the state government’s cooperative milk organizations/milk federations. The government is now implementing this scheme in 18 states from the earlier 14 states.
On the other hand, the implementation of the National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD) is being done by the state’s cooperative/milk federations. Under this scheme, an assistance of Rs 560.46 crore in 2014-18 was given for the development of cooperative milk committees, incentives to increase the number of milk producers and increase processing and refrigeration capacity.