Dairy Livestock

World Bank team visit India to discuss grants, soft loans for NDP-II project

World Bank team will be in India to discuss grants, soft loan for NDP-II project

The World Bank team will be in India to discuss grants and soft loans for the NDP-II project.

The second part of the National Dairy Plan (NDP-II), which will help smaller milk unions improve their marketing and stop milk from being tampered with, should be finished soon.

Meenesh Shah, chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), said that the World Bank mission would be in Anand in the second week of July to talk about the NDP-II. ‘The initial clearances are all done,’ Shah said, adding that the World Bank’s help for NDP-II in the form of a grant or soft loan is likely to be limited to six or seven states and not the whole country.

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‘Now, India is in a different place. The grant that used to be available is no longer out there. Both the Indian government and the World Bank have to put in the same amount of money for the project. ‘In NDP-Phase 1, the World Bank gave us 90% of the soft loan,’ Shah said. The NDP-Phase II is likely to cost between ₹1200 and ₹1500 crore.

Shah said that the second phase of the project would focus on improving the way milk is tested, digitizing milk tankers to stop milk from being changed while in transit, managing manure, as well as helping smaller milk unions improve their marketing. The project could help co-ops use traditional veterinary medicine to treat common diseases. It could also focus on things that were done in the past, such as improving village coverage and adding more farmers to the co-op network.

The NDP-I, which cost ₹2,242 crore, was put into place from March 2012 to November 2019 in 18 of the most important dairying states. NDP-I focused on making milk animals more productive and giving people who make milk access to markets. With the help of NDP-I, it has been shown that a scientifically planned, integrated approach to dairy development can work in a country as big and varied as India.

NDP-I helped about 59 million people in 97,000 villages. It also helped lower the cost of feeding per kg of milk, which increased milk producers’ net daily income. As part of the project, more than 16.8 lakh milk producers were given access to the market. Of these, 7.65 lakh are women. Also Read | NDDB’s subsidiaries earned total profit ₹945.39 cr, Mother Dairy contributed ₹295.10 cr

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