Analysis of Willingness to Pay for Veterinary Services of the Livestock Owners of Sangli District of Maharashtra

Abstract

The provision of animal health services in India is by and large, under the domain of public sector and many health care activities like quarantine, disease management, quality control, research and extension, etc. are mainly the responsibilities of government. With veterinary services consuming about 60-80 per cent of the budget allocated to the livestock sector, fiscal constraints would lead to a decline in the operational efficiency of the government livestock services. Owing to financial constraints, some of the state governments have evolved specific animal healthcare policies tending to privatization of the system. The entry of private sector into the veterinary health care sector depends on the availability and sustainability of an economically profitable practice. In this paper an attempt has been made to study the willingness of the people to pay for providing the animal health care services. The study is based on the personal and focused group interview of 120 farmers selected randomly from the Sangli district of Maharastra. Contingent valuation (CV) approach has been used to study the farmer’s WTP (willingness to pay) for providing animal health care services at government veterinary centres (in-centre) and at farmers’ door steps (at home). The study has shown that increase of one unit in the income from livestock, the willingness to pay value increases by 43.23 for the in-centre services. When the farmer’s locality was away from the public veterinary centre, the WTP value has been found to increase significantly for at home services. The analysis has provided evidence that the livestock owners are willing to pay for the quality veterinary services not only at their door steps but at the veterinary centre also.