Ryots protest milk powder import plan

Thousands of farmers staged a dharna in front of the headquarters of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) here and courted arrest on Monday in protest against the board's decision to import skimmed milk powder (SMP).

An NDDB spokesperson said the board has always supported farmers' organisations and will ensure that the imported SMP is not supplied to the users below the market price.

Maganbhai Patel, chief secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, said, "NDDB's decision is against the interests of the farmers and the milkmen The board is arguing that SMP import is needed as there is a scarcity of milk in some states. But milk procurement in fiscal 2002-03 was higher than that in 2001-02."

Quoting a recent report of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), Patel said during the last fiscal year, milk procurement in the country was up by 10.6 per cent.

NDDB denied this saying procurement by milk co-operatives even in Gujarat during August-September, this year has fallen by about five per cent compared with the last year.

"We have found that there is a shortage of around 22,460 tonnes of SMP in the country. Several dairy co-operatives have requested the board to arrange SMP to tide over the crisis. The Union government has nominated seven organisations to import milk powder on behalf of actual users under the tariff rate quota (TRQ) and NDDB is one of them," said the spokesperson.

The TRQ is part of an agreement which enabled the government to raise the customs tariff on milk powder from zero per cent to 60 per cent.

"The proposals submitted by some countries have envisaged that if a country did not utilise a minimum 65 per cent of the quota, calculated on a three-year average, it may have to reduce or eliminate the 15 per cent duty applicable on such quota imports. This would mean that the powder would have to be imported at zero per cent duty," said the official.