Amul, Mother Dairy hike milk prices; NHAI raises toll charges

Dairy giants Amul and Mother Dairy have hiked milk prices by ₹2 per litre citing an increase in input cost over the last five months. The price hike is effective today.

This comes days after the voting process of the Lok Sabha elections concluded last week.

In Delhi-NCR, Mother Dairy's full cream milk will now cost ₹68 per litre, while toned and double-toned milk at ₹56 and ₹50 per litre, respectively. Cow milk of the brand will now sell at ₹58 per litre while token milk (bulk vended milk) will be retailed at ₹54 per litre.

Mother Dairy sells around 35 lakh litres of fresh milk every day in Delhi-NCR. The milk producer had last revised its milk prices in February 2023. Despite paying higher prices towards milk procurement in the last few months, the consumer prices were kept intact, Mother Dairy said, as per PTI. The heat stress across the country has been unprecedented and it is likely to further impact milk production, it adds.

The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, the marketer of Amul, has announced a price hike of ₹2 per litre for all variants of Amul milk, effective Monday. Amul has also cited an increase in the overall cost of operation and production. Amul had last hiked the prices of its Gold, Taaza and Shakti milk brands by ₹3 per litre in February last year.

The increase of ₹2 per litre translates to the range of 3-4% increase in MRP, which is much lower than the average food inflation, GCMMF said in a statement. “Our member unions have also increased farmer's price approximately by 6-8% over the last one year,” it said. Amul says as a policy it passes on almost 80 paise of every rupee paid by consumers for milk and milk products to the milk producers. "The price revision shall help in sustaining remunerative milk prices to our milk producers and to encourage them for higher milk production," the statement said.

Dairy is not the only item which is seeing a price hike post the general elections. The National Highways Authority of India will hike road toll rates across the country by 3-5% from Monday after putting the annual increase on hold in April due to the Lok Sabha elections, news wire Reuters reported.

Toll charges in India are increased every year in line with inflation. "As the election process is over, the revision of user fee (toll) rates, which was put on hold during the elections, would become effective from June 3," a senior official at the National Highways Authority of India told Reuters.