New Delhi, Mar 19 (UNI) The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved the Revised National Program for Dairy Development (NPDD).
The revised NPDD, a Central Sector Scheme, has been enhanced with an additional Rs 1,000 crore, bringing the total budget to Rs 2,790 crore for the period of the 15th Finance Commission cycle (2021-22 to 2025-26).
This initiative focuses on modernizing and expanding dairy infrastructure, ensuring the sector’s sustained growth and productivity.
The revised NPDD will give an impetus to the dairy sector by creating infrastructure for milk procurement, processing capacity, and ensuring better quality control. It is intended to help farmers gain better access to markets, to ensuring better pricing through value addition, and improve the efficiency of the supply chain, leading to higher incomes and greater rural development.
The scheme is dedicated to improving essential dairy infrastructure, such as milk chilling plants, advanced milk testing laboratories, and certification systems. It also supports the formation of new village dairy cooperative societies and strengthens milk procurement and processing in the North Eastern Region (NER), hilly regions, and Union Territories (UTs), especially in remote and backward areas, as well as the formation of two Milk Producer Companies (MPCs) with dedicated grant support
The second component "Dairying through Cooperatives (DTC)" will continue to foster dairy development through cooperation with the Government of Japan and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as per agreements signed.
This component focuses on the sustainable development of dairy cooperatives, improving production, processing, and marketing infrastructure in the nine States (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal).
The Revised NPDD is expected to establish 10,000 new dairy cooperative societies, processing in the North Eastern Region (NER), as well as the formation of two Milk Producer Companies (MPCs) with dedicated grant support in addition to the ongoing projects of NPDD, to generate an additional 3.2 lakh direct and indirect employment opportunities, particularly benefiting women, which constitute 70 percent of the dairy workforce.
The Revised National Programme for Dairy Development will transform India’s modern infrastructure, in sync with White Revolution 2.0 and will further support the newly formed cooperatives by providing new technology, and quality testing labs. This program will help improve rural livelihoods, generate jobs, and build a stronger, more resilient dairy industry that benefits millions of farmers and stakeholders across the country.
UNI RBE CS