The Dairy/Poultry Venture Capital Fund scheme was started in December 2004 with an outlay of Rs 25 crore. The Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme or DEDS has been fragmented into two separate schemes, the Poultry Venture Capital Fund or Diary Venture Capital Fund from the financial year 2008-09.
In June 2010, the Dairy Venture Capital Fund scheme was revamped to Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme in order to make it more effective through wider coverage, developed component-wise outlays and including new components for the assistance under the scheme. The new modified DEDS scheme was started on the 1st of September, 2010.
Assistance pattern
The pattern of assistance of the Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme are stated below:
- Back ended capital subsidy of 25% of the cost of the project for the General category and 33.33% for SC ST farmers.
- Effective Bank loan
- The margin of entrepreneur contribution for loans beyond 1.6 lakh with 10% of the minimum outlay
Objectives of the scheme
Some of the main objectives of the Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme are mentioned below:
- Generate substantial self-employment and offer infrastructure for the dairy sector
- Encourage heifer calf rearing for development as well as conservation of the good breeding stock
- Providing value addition to milk through production and processing of milk products
- Introduce structural changes in the unorganised sector so that initial production of milk can be taken up at the village level
- Setting up modern and up-to-date dairy farms for the production of clean milk.
- Developing traditional technology in order to handle milk on the commercial level.
Beneficiaries of the scheme
Some of the eligible beneficiaries of the Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme are:
- Individual entrepreneurs, farmers and groups of organised and unorganised sectors. Group of organised sector, including self-help groups, milk unions, milk federation, dairy cooperative societies, Panchayat Raj institutions, etc.
- More than one member of a particular family can be assisted under the Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme only if they can set up separate units with separate infrastructure at different locations. The boundaries should have a distance of at least 500m between them.
- An applicant will be eligible for availing the assistance for all components under the scheme but only once for each component
- The primary focus is to be given to projects being implemented in cluster mode covering dairy farmers or women in self-help groups, cooperatives, producer companies, etc.
- The primary focus is needed to be given to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Women, Landless, Below-poverty line farmers, farmers in drought areas, etc
Agencies involved
The Nodal Agency of the scheme will be National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABAD). Co-operative banks, commercial banks and regional rural and urban banks, state cooperative agriculture and rural development banks and more such institutions which are eligible for refinancing from NABARD will implement the scheme. The Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme is also open to the unorganised as well as organised sectors.
Subsidy under the scheme
The subsidy under the Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme is offered only to those that are able to obtain bank loans sanctioned for the project. The financial institutions eligible for financing the scheme are:
- Regional, rural and urban banks
- Commercial banks
- State cooperative banks
- Other institutions are eligible for refinancing from NABARD