Anand: Dairies of Gujarat have submitted memorandum to Honorable Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh with suggestions to take following action:
*Restore custom duty on Milk Powder to 15 % on 10,000 MT TRQ and to 40% on butteroil.
*Impose export duty on export of Oilmeals, de-oiled cake, cattlefeed etc which helps in price reduction of cattlefeed and Removal of VAT & Excise duty on use of Molasses in cattlefeed.
*Reduce Income Tax on co-operatives which will help in improving returns to farmer members.
*VAT on all value-added Dairy products to be fixed to 4%.
In today’s critical situation affecting every citizen of the country, Government urgently needs to act and protect dairy farmers of India which will help in keeping control over input prices to milk farmer and ultimately to check milk prices in the country also.
“Milk” is the largest crop in India in value terms above Rs 2.25 lakh crore and the milk group contributes highest to the total output of the agricultural sector surpassing the output value of wheat, rice and oilseeds.
'Milk' directly affects livelihood of country’s almost all farmers including landless and marginal farmers. Today at the time of unprecedented drought like situation prevailing in country, it is necessary that Government pays immediate attention to the country’s dairy co-operative industry and ensure that it does not cripple.
Interestingly, 'Milk' also forms the largest share of expenditure on food item in a consumer basket and hence the rise in milk price affect each common man of India the most.
*Proposal to restore custom duty on Milk Powder and Butteroil
Recently there has been news in the media that NDDB plans to import 10,000 MT skimmed milk powder to meet the domestic demand. However, country is soon entering into flush milk season and such announcement of import will results into substantial drop in market prices which will affect the milk farmers very badly.
We have suggested Government not to rush into SMP import at this juncture but review the milk scenario in March-April 2010 (at the end of flush season) and if required may take a call to import SMP.
Further, Government of India had issued a customs-tariff notification no. 42/2008 dated 1st April 2008 to reduce import duty of Butter, Ghee and Butteroil to 30% from previous level of 40%. Government has also issued a customs-tariff notification no. 56/2008 dated 29th April 2008 to reduce import duty on milk powders to 5 % from 15 % on.
Source : financialexpress