Five year national plan to develop dairy industry

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

The Agriculture and Livestock Ministry yesterday introduced a five year national plan to develop the country's dairy industry.

This national program intends to increase the country's existing dairy production and sales two fold by the year 2010, Agriculture and Livestock Minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a media briefing yesterday.

"Rs. 7000 million will be invested to implement this national plan during the next five years with effect from year 2005.

There is a possibility of recovering this money invested on this program within two years through the reduction of 20,000 metric tons of milk powder imported to the country annually."

Under this national plan, the Ministry will allocate Rs. 500 million to develop the country's dairy industry during year 2005.

This will include the establishment of 150 dairy farmer villages and set up 50 milk sales outlets in 50 selected Dairy farmer villages. In addition, 1000 hybrid cattle varieties will also released to dairy farmers this year, he said.

The Minister said the dairy industry is one of the key areas which had been neglected and less attention paid in our development agendas." At present the country needed 723 million litres of fresh milk annually. However, only 17 per cent of this requirement is met locally today."

"During 2003, Sri Lanka had imported 67941 metric tons of milk and dairy products spending Rs. 11.5 billion. Therefore, the intention of this national plan is to make every possible attempt to increase local dairy production and save a large sum annually to import milk and other dairy products."

Dissanayake said increasing the present dairy production by two fold by year 2010 is a difficult task.

This is because dairy production is entirely based on a natural process. In order to increase dairy production,the country's cattle population should be increased while properly organising dairy farmers.

This development plan has laid key emphasis on ways of turning the dairy industry into a profitable business venture. According to the Minister many development plans formulated were based on the political agendas of political parties in power.

This development plan has been prepared entirely based on the instructions of Ministry officials and other dairy experts. Therefore whatever political change in the future, this development plan will remain unchanged, he said.

Under the UPFA Government, country's dairy industry has recorded a steady progress last year. MILCO Private Ltd which comes under the Ministry purview has purchased 46.5 million litres of fresh milk from farmers last year paying Rs. 800 million.

MILCO were also able to increase the price of a litre of fresh milk by three rupees while the salary of MILCO employees was increased by Rs. 1500. When the private companies increased milk powder prices on several occasions last year, MILCO could provide a packet of Highland milk powder to consumers at Rs. 120, he said.