December 20, 2004

Pakistan Seeks Indian Dairy Expertise

Never mind its disregard for the word 'co-operative', Pakistan now wants to milk India's dairy sector experience in its internationally acclaimed co-operative system of milk procurement. The neighbouring country has sought India's help in developing a model for milk procurement and processing besides exploring the possibility of importing dairy processing and packaging machinery from India.

A high level dairy delegation from the country represented by Pakistan Dairy Association (PDA) in a tie-up with the Strategic Working Group (SWOG), an NGO funded by the USAID is scheduled to visit the country in February 2005.

Among other things, the team also plans to invite Indian dairy majors to invest in dairy processing plants in Pakistan, sources in the dairy industry told FE.

While high on the PDA's agenda is to study the co-operative system of milk procurement in the country and also the healthcare management and balanced cattle feed, the team also aims to study milk processing systems, particularly the pasteurised poly packing of liquid milk. Pasteurised packaged milk, incidentally, is not so popular in Pakistan.

The team also plans to visit some of the prominent dairy plants including Dynamix Dairy at Baramati in Maharashtra, Nestle India's Moga plant in Punjab, National Dairy Development Board's (NDDB) and Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federations (GCMMF) plants at Anand in Gujarat.

On the face of it, Pakistan's interest in India's dairy sector is surprising. At 5% per annum, the rate of growth of milk production is higher in Pakistan than in India. Per capita consumption of milk in Pakistan is also far higher than in India. Pakistan is the fifth largest milk producing country in the world producing about 28.62 million tonnes (MT) milk annually - behind India, which ranks first on this count.

Pakistan, however, lacks knowledge in procurement of milk from farmers directly. "None of the dairy plants have arrangement to procure milk from the farmers directly. They get milk through the middlemen who have interface with farmers similar to that in India," GCMMF's Dr RS Khanna told the FE, after returning from his seven day trip to Pakistan.

"The major issue with these plants is that they need to install a rural network of procurement of milk that brings in unadulterated milk. Adulteration of milk, though not as rampant as in Northern India, is a major problem and concern for the processors," he added.

Of the total milk production in Pakistan, 70% is consumed in rural areas and 30% in the large cities and towns.