Individual milk manufacturers on Aug. 12 met with Serbian Agriculture Minister Sasa Dragin in Novi Sad, with whom they reached an agreement to be included in the drafting of regulations on the amount of milk premiums and subsidies in farming.

Consortium representative Uros Secerov and Minister Dragin told the press that they also agreed that the National Laboratory for Milk Quality Testing should go into operation by the end of 2010 at the latest.

Milk manufacturers and Dragin did not discuss the request to boost the sales price of raw milk, VAT- and subsidy-free, to 32 eurocents per liter, as that is not the domain of the Agriculture Ministry.

The meeting took place a day after individual manufacturers formed a consortium for their joint representation before the state and dairy farms.

The consortium members requested that the prescribed subsidy per head of cattle should be increased to RSD20,000, and that it also be implemented for workers and registered agricultural farms.

They also asked for an increase in the amount of premium per liter of sold milk from the current RSD1.5 to RSD5.5, and that the republican budget for 2011 should harmonize it with the average milk premium in CEFTA countries.

Considering that the meeting was not attended by the representatives of the milk industry, Secerov repeated that, if dairy farms do not accept the manufacturers' proposal to make the sales price 32 eurocents per liter, the manufacturers will stop delivering milk to processors on Aug. 22.

The consortium consists of manufacturers who produce around 200,000 liters of milk in total, and it involves both natural and legal persons.

The Agriculture Ministry on Aug. 11 announced that the shortage of milk is the result of the speculative actions conducted by "Salford" who, as the Commission for the Protection of Competition established twice, holds a monopoly.