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Factories hit as milk shortage persists
KATHMANDU, JUN 17 -
A growing shortage of milk has put several milk processing factories across the country at risk.
Farmers, who used to organise regular ‘milk holidays’ as a protest against the lack of market, have also failed to supply milk to the growing milk factories.
Milk factory owners say the setting up of such factories in huge numbers of late is to blame for the shortage as demand went up while the supply or production remained the same.
After two big milk-processing factories, Sujal Dairy in Pokhara and Chitwan CoE in Chitwan, were established to encourage farmers and discourage regular
‘milk holidays,’ the demand for milk went up dramatically.
Entrepreneurs also say that a new factory ‘Cooperative Powder Milk Factory’ in Sarlahi district is in the pipeline. If the factory comes up, the demand for milk will reach a record high. The proposed factory targets to process 100,000 litres of milk every day.
Niranjan Shrestha, executive director of Sujal Dairy said there is a huge demand for powder milk in foreign countries. “China, Iran and Pakistan are also demanding powder milk,” he said.
Sujal Dairy has exported 50 tonnes of powder milk to Pakistan recently. “We are planning to export another 100 tonnes of powder milk there,” he said.
“China has also confirmed to take in any bulk of powder milk produced from Buffalo milk,” Shrestha said. According to him, 10-15 percent of the total processed milk in his factory is produced from buffalo milk.
Though Sujal need 100,000 litres of milk every day, it is able to get only 45,000 litres. Over 400 cooperatives had been supplying milk to the factory.
Nepal imports milk powder worth Rs 2 billion each year.
During the Prime Minister’s visit to India recently, entrepreneurs had requested him to make efforts to import cows and buffaloes from India. However, the government did not make any such request, a source said.
Entrepreneurs say cows and buffaloes give 3-4 litres of milk at a time on an average. This has also contributed to the shortage. Frequent ‘milk holidays’ that used to take place in major milk producing districts until some years ago have also discouraged farmers to keep crossbred buffaloes and cows. Hari Dahal, spokesperson of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, said the government has allocated Rs 15 million for the genetic improvement of cows in the upcoming budget in order to boost animal husbandry. Similarly, the ministry has proposed Rs 447.7 million for a ‘buffalo conservation and settlement programme.’
“There are other programmes in the next budget that focus on discouraging export of animals,” Dahal said. The ministry is also planning to increase the number of artificial insemination of productive domestic animals to 500,000. The needed infrastructure for this will be had, Dahal added.
In the last fiscal, 86,000 animals were inseminated artificially. According to government statistics, there are seven million cows/ox and
4.5 million buffaloes.
The country’s milk production is 1.4 million litres annually.
Posted on: 2010-06-18 08:32
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