Indigenous bovines a focus as livestock, dairying budget set to rise 20%

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : The animal husbandry and dairying department may get a 20% higher allocation of ₹5,193 crore in the FY25 interim budget, two senior officials said, reflecting a sharper focus on improving dairy and livestock health. The increase is expected on account of a higher allocation for schemes targeted for dairy, livestock health and animal infrastructure—a sector that has been growing at around 8-10% annually.

Until the third quarter, the department had spent 45% of its budgeted estimate (BE) of ₹4,328 crore and expects to use up the rest of the corpus in the last quarter of the ongoing financial year. Schemes like the Rashtriya Gokul Mission (RGM), which aims to promote indigenous bovine breeds in order to increase milk production, have got a higher allocation of nearly ₹870 crore in the revised estimate (RE) for FY24 from the BE of ₹600 crore.

However, the overall RE has been trimmed to ₹4,184 crore, with the department confident of spending the entire allocation by the end of the ongoing financial year. “In the FY25 interim budget, the allocation could be around 20% more than FY24 as the government’s priorities are dairy, livestock health and animal husbandry infrastructure development fund.

Schemes related to these are expected to get a higher budgetary allocation," one of the officials said. In FY24, the union budget allocated ₹2,650 crore for animal husbandry, ₹2,350 crore for livestock health and disease control, ₹410 crore for the National Livestock Mission, ₹340 crore for the Infrastructure Development Fund and ₹327 crore for dairy development.

While these schemes may get a higher allocation this year, the budget for RGM could be on par with that of the ongoing financial year. The RGM was launched in 2014