Kathmandu: Private sector dairy farmers have demanded concessional loans from the government. In a press release issued on Wednesday, the Nepal Dairy Industry Association demanded a soft loan of up to Rs 100 million for 10 years.
Not long ago, the government had provided a concessional loan of Rs 200 million to the state-owned dairy development organization DDC.
The union president Raj Kumar Dahal said that there is a problem in paying the salaries of the employees and the farmers as the sales of dairy products dropped by 70 percent due to the second lockdown.
He said that there is a stock of goods worth Rs 4.25 billion including 3,000 tonnes of powdered milk and 2,500 tonnes of butter in the industries due to declining market consumption.
The association has stated that there is an acute shortage of working capital to pay the farmers, salaries of the employees, wages for making powdered milk and installment of the bank due to the large stock of dairy products.
According to Dahal, 39 dairy industries under the Dairy Industry Association, Dairy Development Corporation and all dairies across the country have about 5,500 to 6,000 tonnes of powdered milk and the same amount of butter.
The association has also demanded to provide vaccine against covid to the employees working in the dairy sector, stop the import of dairy products and provide subsidy for various milk products.