More Than $80 Million for Dairy Products in Four Months

Four months and more than $80 million

The January–April ledger totals $80,457,472: $44,447,720 for milk, $7,659,414 for butter, $3,498,783 for ghee and $24,851,555 for cheese. Infant formula was excluded. The four categories show the breadth of dairy financing but cannot be interpreted through one unit price.

Using the period’s official exchange rate plus the 15% levy, the original analysis converted the basket to about LYD 468 million. It then estimated around LYD 7 per litre of milk, LYD 26.1 per kilogram of butter and LYD 14.5 per kilogram of ghee, while acknowledging that the cheese quantity was unavailable. These are implied costs, not observed retail prices.

Milk, cheese, butter and ghee are not one price

The basket connects household food security with agricultural and industrial policy. Some imports may be structurally necessary; others may be candidates for local processing. The answer depends on milk supply, feed cost, energy, water, scale and distribution—not on the financing total alone.

Why a partial-year total can mislead

This earlier window is contained inside the later eight-month update. Adding the two would double count January–April. Nor does an executed credit establish consumption; goods may arrive later, enter inventory or serve industrial production.

From FX approval to cold-chain delivery

A dairy strategy should distinguish primary production from processing and packaging. Foreign exchange can support either imports or equipment and inputs for local capacity, but each option should be measured by cost, resilience, jobs and verified output.

Publish monthly dairy categories with value, weight, unit price, origin and execution stage, plus customs arrivals and domestic production. An overlap note should accompany every cumulative update so public analysis cannot double count periods.

The 4,000-cow alternative is a feasibility question

The original scenario assumed 4,000 cows producing 25 litres a day for 365 days, or 36.5 million litres a year. The multiplication is correct. The economic conclusion is not automatic: lactation cycles, herd replacement, feed imports, veterinary losses, water, cooling, power, capital and farm-gate price determine whether the project can replace imported milk competitively.

Comparisons with schools, hospitals or scholarships illustrate opportunity cost, but they are not interchangeable budget choices unless construction, staffing and recurring costs use official project estimates. The strongest policy comparison is milk against a fully costed dairy investment with the same time horizon and risk—not a list of unrelated headline projects.