Government made this plan regarding the dairy sector
India’s dairy sector provides livelihood to millions of small farmers in the country. With the help of cooperatives in the country, the milk production sector has become a formal sector. In such a situation, the government has made all arrangements to ensure that these small farmers do not suffer losses due to cheap imports from abroad or foreign investment.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal says dairy is a very sensitive sector in India as it involves issues of livelihood of small farmers. Therefore, the government has no plans to offer tax exemptions or tariff reliefs under any Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in this region.
This plan has been made for Europe.
India is currently negotiating the ninth round of FTAs with Europe. Piyush Goyal said in this regard that India has not given any concessions of rights in the dairy sector to Switzerland and Norway under the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) trade agreement. It was signed in March. He said that this sector was also discussed with Australia, but India had clearly informed them about the sensitive aspects related to this sector.
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Speaking at a joint press conference in Adelaide with Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell, Piyush Goyal said that our farmers have on an average very less land. It is a 2-3 acre farm with 3-4 heads of cattle, whereas in Australia both farms and dairy farms are very large and it would be almost impossible for these large and small farms to compete with each other on a level playing field.
He said that we had discussed this issue three years ago and on previous occasions as well, and dairy is a sector that we have not been able to open up with tariff concessions in any of our FTAs around the world.
He said that this sector is open for business, but some customs duties have been imposed. We have not opened up, nor do we plan to open up dairy products to Europe… nor have we opened up to Switzerland and Norway, with whom we recently signed the EFTA trade agreement.
