Bucking the global trend, India’s dairy sector is growing at an impressive rate of 6% with the country’s largest milk cooperative, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (Amul) contributing significantly to the growth, prime minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday.
Addressing a gathering of farmers and cooperative members here at the Narendra Modi stadium, the PM said, “In the past 10 years, the milk production in India has gone up by around 60% and the per person availability of milk has grown by around 40%. At a time when the global dairy sector is growing merely at a rate of 2%, India’s dairy sector is growing at a rate of 6%.”
He noted that Amul is targeting to double the milk processing capacity of its plants in the next five years, but I want Amul to become the largest dairy company as soon as possible from its current position of 8th largest dairy firm.”
Modi also unveiled five new dairy projects worth more than Rs 1,000 crore. These projects include the Rs 600 crore modern technology based automatic cheese plant set up by the Sabarkantha Union. The plant has a capacity to produce 30 MTPD (Ton per Day) Cheese and 45 MTPD Whey powder. Apart from this plant, Sarhad Dairy’s (Kutch region) fully automatic Ice Cream plant (investment of Rs 110 crore) and a dairy processing plant coming to Navi Mumbai by Bharuch Dairy ( Rs 105 crore) were also inaugurated.
Lauding the achievements of GCMMF in steering the milk sector to great heights, Modi said, “Many brands have been created in India but there is none like Amul which is synonymous with development, trust, people participation and the inspiration for Atma-Nirbhar Bharat. Furthermore, Amul represents the power of cooperation as this Rs 80,000 crore turnover firm exports its products to more than 50 countries, has a network of 3.6 million farmers in among its 18 milk cooperatives, collects around 36 million litre milk per day and disemburses more than Rs 200 crore into the accounts of farmers on daily basis.”
During his speech, the Prime Minister also acknowledged the contribution of women workers in the success of India’s Rs 10 trillion sector. He said, “Women, who constitute around 70% of the workforce in the sector, are the true backbone of the sector. In a bid to enhance their power, 15,000 drones are being provided to women-led self help groups (SHGs) under the NAMO Drone Didi Yojana and Drone Didis are being trained to operate them. This training will help them to spread fertilizers and pesticides in their crops.”
