Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF): an overview

Pashu Sandesh, 02 January 2019

Consequent to the Union Budget 2017-18 announcement, DIDF has been set up as a corpus of Rs. 8004 crore with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in its meeting dated 12.09.2017 has approved the scheme. Out of Rs10881 crore of financial outlay for project components of DIDF, Rs. 8004 shall be loan from NABARD to National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) / National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC), Rs. 2001 crore shall be End Borrowers (EB) contribution, Rs. 12 crore would be NDDB/NCDC’s share and Rs. 864 crore shall be contributed by Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries (DADF) toward interest subvention.

The project will focus on building an efficient milk procurement system by setting up of processing and chilling infrastructure & installation of electronic milk adulteration testing equipment at village level.

The salient features of the scheme:

I. 95 Lakh milk producers will be benefited by covering 50,000 villages.

II. Establishment of 28000 Bulk Milk Coolers with 140 Lakh Litres per Day as additional milk chilling capacity.

III. Providing 28000 Milk Testing Equipments to check adulteration in milk.

IV. Creation of additional 210 Metric Ton per Day Milk Drying capacity.

V. Modernisation, expansion and creation of Milk Processing capacity of 126 Lakh Litres per Day.

VI. Creation of Infrastructure of 59.78 lakh Litres per Day capacity for Value-Added Dairy products to ensure remunerative prices to milk producers.

By setting up the Dairy Infrastructure and Development Fund, government is trying to boost the Dairy sector and thereby the income of the farmers who are totally dependent upon the Animal Husbandry as their main source of livelihood.