Patna: Bihar’s dairy cooperatives have emerged among the best performers in the country in implementing the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system for milk procurement payments and meeting targets under the Dairy Through Cooperatives (DTC-JICA) project, dairy, fisheries and animal resources department secretary Shirshat Kapil Ashok said on Saturday.Addressing a regional workshop in Kolkata on cooperative-led dairy development in eastern India, Ashok said trust and transparency were central to the sustainable growth of dairy cooperatives. He said Comfed and its affiliated milk unions were directly transferring milk procurement payments to beneficiaries’ bank accounts through the DBT system.Ashok said a review of DTC-JICA Phase-I found Bihar’s milk unions were among the leading performers nationally in implementing the project and achieving targets related to milk procurement, marketing and processing infrastructure.The state’s dairy cooperatives were also appreciated for their performance in improving animal productivity, officials said.The workshop was organised under the Centre’s National Dairy Development Programme as part of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)-supported Dairy Through Cooperatives project. It was jointly hosted by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) and the department of animal husbandry and dairying.Senior officials of dairy federations and milk unions from Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh participated in the workshop.
