Gujarat to hand over ailing Saurashtra dairies to NDDB

Following a tripartite agreement between the government of Gujarat, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) and the Gujarat Dairy Development Corporation (GDDC), GDDC has handed over seven dairies with an aggregate capacity of close to four lakh litre per day and a 100 tonne per day cattlefeed plant located in Saurashtra to the NDDB.

NDDB is expected to invest around Rs 20 crore for revival of these units in Saurashtra.

These units were declared sick by the Board of Industrial Finance and Restructuring (BIFR) in 1994 and these are planned to be revived by NDDB under a scheme approved by BIFR. All the units are at present lying idle for a decade and were earlier damaged by the quake that struck the region in 2001.

NDDB chairperson Amrita Patel stated in a release, "The state government's action demonstrates its faith and confidence in the ability of NDDB to reconstruct and turnaround the units so as to set a new path for dairy development in Saurashtra. We hope to facilitate the creation of new generation co-operatives in this region to not just enable better incomes to milk producers but build well governed producer centric institutions."

In the years following the launch of Operation Flood, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) has concentrated on dairy development through the milk unions in central and south Gujarat while the state government had specially incorporated GDDC as a state government enterprise to establish dairies in Saurashtra and NDDB had advanced loans and grants to GDDC for the purpose.

National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is a body constituted under the National Dairy Development Board Act, 1987. It is a public financial institution (PFI).

NDDB was found to serve the farmers. NDDB launched, implemented and completed Operation Flood, the largest dairy development programme in the world.