Centre merges livestock schemes, hopes to raise Rs 54,681 crore

The Centre on Wednesday said it would spend Rs 9,800 crore on various livestock development schemes that will be merged into three broad categories to better leverage investments in the sector.

I&B Minister Anurag Thakur said the central government will spend Rs 9,800 crore over a five-year period to leverage investments to the tune of Rs 54,618 crore to further boost livestock sector. This will include share of investments by state governments, state cooperatives, financial institutions, external funding agencies and other stakeholders.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, decided to realign a slew of livestock schemes into three broad categories – indigenous cattle and dairy development, livestock health and infrastructure development.

Through the fresh initiative, the government hoped to make animal husbandry more remunerative to 10 crore farmers engaged in the sector.

Thakur said under the livestock development programmes, the Centre also plans to launch ambulances to ferry ailing animals to veterinary clinics.

An official statement said all schemes of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying will be merged into three broad categories as development programmes.

The first will include the Rashtriya Gokul Mission, the National Programme for Dairy Development, the National Livestock Mission, and the Livestock Census and Integrated Sample Survey.

The second development programe merges the Livestock Health and Disease Control scheme and the National Animal Disease Control Programme.

The third will merge the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund and the Dairy Infrastructure Development Fund, and also incorporate support to dairy cooperatives and Farmer Producer Organisations engaged in dairy activities.

“NPDD will focus on milk procurement, processing, marketing and check quality of milk and its products. The scheme targets installation of about 8,900 bulk milk coolers and likely to cover about 26,700 villages benefitting more than 8 lakh milk producers,” Parshottam Rupala, Union Minister for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying said.