Information and Broadcasting Minister, Prakash Javadekar said that Cabinet has approved a Rs 4,558 crore scheme to promote dairy sector that will further benefit around 95 lakh farmers in 50,000 villages.
Briefing media about the Cabinet decisions, the minister said this scheme will take the ‘White revolution’ to the next level.
Besides this, the Cabinet has decided to increase interest subvention from 2% to 2.5% under the scheme - Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund or DIDF with the revised outlay of Rs 11,184 crore.
Javadekar said that both the decisions will be beneficial for the farming community.
The activities that come under the DIDF are modernizations of new milk processing facilities & manufacturing facilities for value-added products, electronic adulteration testing kit, chilling infrastructure and project management & learning.
Under Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund, 28,000 bulk milk coolers will be set up with 140 lakh litres/day as additional milk chilling capacity. In addition, milk drying capacity will also be raised to 210 metric tonnes per day. Apart from this, 28,000 milk testing equipment will be given to check adulteration in milk.
The Cabinet also approved a plan to create infrastructure of 59.78 lakh litres/day capacity for value-added dairy products to guarantee remunerative prices to milk producers.
Centre will provide interest subvention up to 2.5% to NABARD from 2019-20 (W.e.f. 30th July 2019) to 2030-31. If there is any further hike in the cost of funds then it will be borne by the end borrowers themselves, according to the Cabinet statement.
The funding period of the scheme i.e. 2017-18 to 2019-20 has also been revised from 2018-19 to 2022-23. And the repayment period has been extended up to 2030-31 with spillover to 1st quarter of FY32.
