Thursday, July 20, 2017

Government may hike milk price

The government is planning to hike milk price within a month.
Considering the demand from farmers that their cost of livestock farming has gone up in recent months, the government has been planning to increase price of the milk after three years. The dairy farmers, who are paid an average of Rs 42 for a litre of milk have been demanding an increase it to Rs 54 per litre.
"The Dairy Development Board (DDB) has recently submitted a study report suggesting the government to hike milk price,” according to spokesperson for the Ministry of Livestock Development (MoLD) Shyam Prasad Poudel. "The government will allow the board to increase the price of milk after thoroughly analysing the report," he said, however, refusing to disclose the new adjustment rate in milk price recommended by the board.
The state-owned Dairy Development Corporation (DDC) will adjust the price of milk following a go-ahead from the DDB and private dairies will also revise the price within one or two days.
The dairy firms have been selling milk with three per cent fat and eight per cent solid-not-fat (SNF) at Rs 64 per litre in the market, while milk with five per cent fat and eight per cent SNF is sold at Rs 80 per litre.
Meanwhile, livestock farmers have said that they should get at least Rs 50 for a litre of milk to sustain their business but the dairy firms have been paying merely Rs 42 or Rs 43 to them.
The country is currently producing an average of 1.8 million metric tonnes of milk annually, according to the statistics of the ministry. "Nepal is more than 80 per cent self-sufficient in milk while the country imports some amount of fresh milk from India during off-seasons."
According to the general manager of DDC Ganga Timsina, the price hike in milk is necessary not only because the production cost of farmers has increased but also due to surging production cost of dairy firms. But the price hike will benefit the farmers as almost 70 per cent of the hiked price will go to farmers and remaining 30 per cent will go to dairy firms.
Earlier, the government had increased the price of milk by up to Rs 10 per litre in December of 2014. The government had then increased the price by eight rupees per litre for milk with three per cent fat and eight per cent SNF and by Rs 10 per litre for milk with five per cent fat and eight per cent SNF.

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