The Ministry of Finance has given approval to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development to submit a proposal to the Council of Ministers for providing Rs600 million loan to the Dairy Development Corporation.

The secretariat of Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel said the corporation can use this amount to pay farmers their outstanding dues.

As much as Rs10 million was initially allocated to the DDC as a loan for the current fiscal year. The finance ministry has given the go-ahead to the agriculture ministry to transfer an additional Rs590 million from the ministry’s annual budget, bringing the total loan to Rs600 million.

The proposal will be submitted to the Council of Ministers for approval and the government will proceed with the loan once it is endorsed by the Cabinet.

The secretariat said Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Paudel, Agriculture Minister Ram Nath Adhikari, and officials from the Corporation have discussed the issue regarding the settlement of the outstanding dues.

Farmers have been protesting for long, demanding the DDC clear their outstanding dues.

Earlier in May the agitating farmers had submitted a memorandum to the then Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Development Jwala Kumari Sah demanding that the government clear the outstanding payments of dairy farmers immediately.

At the time, they said the state-owned DDC owes Rs1.83 of dairy farmers as of mid-May, with the total debt, including private dairies, amounting to around Rs6 billion.