Bagmati Province Government's Powdered Milk Plant Remains Unoperational for 2.5 Years

Hetauda. The powdered milk plant, built with the investment of the Bagmati Province government, has been in limbo for 2.5 years. Despite the Bagmati government investing approximately 47 crore rupees in its construction in Sisaughari, Hetauda-10, the plant has not been able to become operational. Delay in deciding the operational modality has limited the project, which involved crores of rupees in investment, to trial production. The province government had established the industry with the aim of solving the 'milk holiday' problem faced by farmers during peak milk production, converting surplus milk into powder and butter to ease market management, and adding value to dairy products. However, even though the industry construction is complete and trial production has begun, it has not been able to deliver expected results due to the lack of a permanent operational structure. According to Hemraj Paudel, Vice-Chairman of the Dairy Development Board, Bagmati Province, the operational modality should have been prepared before industry construction; instead, the physical structure was built first, and then the operational model was sought. He admits that this is why the industry is facing operational complexities. 'The operational modality should have been prepared first, but here the factory was built first, and then the study on how to run it began. Now we have prepared the operational procedures, financial analysis, market study, operational model, and province-level dairy policy. We are now in the implementation phase of the decision,' Paudel said. According to him, the board is working to improve past weaknesses and make the industry operational. He stated that the board is trying to make the industry operational by managing the problems. He mentioned that the board has prepared the necessary procedures for operating the factory and submitted them to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development. He added that the process of getting the procedures approved by the cabinet through the ministry is underway. According to Vice-Chairman Paudel, the possibility of operating under a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model was studied in the initial phase, but it was concluded that this model is legally impossible because the federal cooperative act does not allow cooperative institutions to invest in companies. One reason for the delay in the decision-making process, even after the procedures were prepared, is the fire that occurred during last year's protest, which the board also cited. He stated that some important documents submitted to the ministry were destroyed in the fire, necessitating the redrafting and resubmission of the process. 'The procedures were prepared in Shrawan, but some documents were burned in a fire during the protest. Later, we redrafted them based on the old draft and submitted them to the ministry,' he said.

Four Modalities to Run the Industry