The Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (KCMMF), known by its brand name Milma, has demanded rollback of the GST Council’s decision to impose 5% GST on relabelled and repackaged buttermilk, curd, lassi and paneer, and steeply raise the tax on dairy machinery from 12% to 18%.
The decision of the GST Council meeting, held on July 1, will cause severe stress on the country’s dairy sector, which is already strained due to increase in input cost and the pandemic-induced downturn, the KCMMF said in a statement on Wednesday.
“It is rather unfortunate that the decision to bring in more dairy-based products within the GST net has come at a time when the Indian dairy sector is passing through a very hard time due to run-away inflationary pressure on input cost,” said Milma chairman K. S. Mani.
