The Agriculture Ministry has asked the Commerce Ministry to hike the import duty on whey milk powder to 40 per cent from the existing 30 per cent and increase export incentives on dairy products and casein to 20 per cent from the existing 10 per cent.

To assuage the agitating farmers, the Centre on Thursday decided to initiate a series of measures, including distributing milk through welfare schemes such as Anganwadi and Mid-day meal schemes.

The Agriculture Ministry, in a statement, also cited a measure which it earlier announced: its plan to set up a ₹300-crore corpus to provide working capital loans to State milk co-operative federations at a simple interest of 5 per cent.

On Tuesday, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had said that a group of ministers will explore ways to encourage export of milk powder and other milk products.The procurement price of milk in Maharashtra has slumped to ₹17-18 a litre from ₹24-27 in less than a year due to increasing supply-demand gap. The export of milk powder and milk products from the country took a hit in the last one year on a slow-down in the global dairy market.

According to the Agriculture Ministry, it has been requesting various States since last December to take necessary steps to encourage supply of milk and milk products through Mid-day meal and Anganwadi schemes.

While States such as Karnataka, Bihar and Rajasthan have started distributing milk through Anganwadi scheme, Rajasthan is providing it for the Mid-day meal scheme, it said.

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