New Delhi: In a major move aimed at giving a boost to dairy farming, the government has decided to incentivise exports of milk products, add milk to mid-day meal rations as well as reduce GST and increase import duty on certain products.
According to a senior official, the Agriculture Ministry has asked Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) to increase the export incentive for milk and milk products and casein from existing 10 per cent to 20 per cent.
The decision in hurry has been taken to appease the protesting dairy farmers in the BJP-ruled Maharashtra over the issue of increasing procurement price.
The decision in this regard was taken after a high-level inter-ministerial meeting, which was held on Tuesday. At the meeting Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Railways Minister Piyush Goyal and Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, who participated through video-conferencing, discussed in length about all possible measures to provide incentives to dairy farmers.
The government has created a corpus of Rs 300 crore to provide a working capital loan to state cooperative federations in the country. India holds the top position in milk production in the world and contributes 19 per cent to world milk production. Milk production has grown by 23.69 per cent in 2014-18 as compared to UPA's 2010-14.
To discourage import of milk products in the country, the government has already increased import duty of whey milk powder from 30 per cent to 40 per cent, the official said.