India's dairy sector provides livelihood to millions of small farmers of the country. With the help of co-operatives, the milk production sector has been converted into a formal sector. In such a situation, the government has made full preparations 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 that dairy is a very sensitive sector in India, as it involves livelihood issues of small farmers. Therefore, the government has no plans to give tax exemption or duty relief in this sector under any free trade agreement (FTA).
India is currently negotiating the ninth round of FTA with Europe. Regarding this, Piyush Goyal says that India has not given any duty concessions in the dairy sector to Switzerland and Norway under the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) trade agreement. This was signed in March. He said that discussions were also held with Australia regarding this sector, but India clearly informed them about the sensitive things related to this sector.
Piyush Goyal said in a joint press conference with Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell in Adelaide, our farmers have very little land on average. It is a 2-3 acre farm with 3-4 livestock, whereas both farms and dairy farms in Australia are very large and it will be almost impossible for these large and small farms to compete with each other on an equal level.
He said, we have discussed this issue three years ago and on previous occasions as well, and dairy is one sector for which we have not been able to open up the sector with duty concessions in any of our FTAs across the world.
He said that this sector is open for trade, but some customs duties have been imposed on it. We have neither opened dairy to Europe nor are we planning to open it… nor have we opened it to Switzerland and Norway, with whom we have recently signed the EFTA trade agreement.
