Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah, addressed the 89th General Council meeting of the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) in New Delhi. During his address, Shri Amit Shah highlighted the crucial role of NCDC in fulfilling Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Sahakar se Samridhi,’ emphasizing that cooperatives are essential for the economic development of the country’s 60 crore population without capital.
Key points from Shri Amit Shah’s address:
- Vision of Prime Minister Modi: The Ministry of Cooperation, under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Modi, has taken 54 initiatives in the last 27 months to strengthen the cooperative movement and increase the share of cooperatives in GDP.
- Initiatives for Ease of Doing Business:
- Computerization of Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS).
- Model bylaws.
- Expanding PACS functions to include over 30 business activities such as dairy, setting up of godowns, LPG/Petrol/Green energy distribution agency, banking correspondents, and more.
- PACS providing over 300 services as Common Service Centres (CSC).
- Significant Initiatives:
- Jan Aushadhi Kendras.
- PACS as Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samridhi Kendra and Paani Samiti.
- National Cooperative Database development with comprehensive data of over 8.00 lakh cooperative societies.
- NCDC’s Role:
- NCDC is the implementing agency for various schemes of the Government of India.
- Disbursed financial assistance of more than Rs.41,000 crore in the Financial Year 2022-23.
- Aiming for 10 times growth in disbursement of financial assistance in the current financial year.
- Zero net NPA and loan recovery rate over 99% for 2022-23.
- Future Targets:
- Setting a target of achieving Rs.1 lakh crore yearly disbursement in the next 3 years.
- Exploring avenues for borrowing on lower rates and lending to the cooperative sector to keep interest rates low.
- Widening Scope of NCDC:
- From agricultural marketing and inputs to processing, storage, and cold chain.
- Designated as a project implementing agency under the world’s largest food storage scheme in the cooperative sector.
- Implementing agencies for schemes like Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmers Producer Organizations (FPOs) and Formation and Promotion of Fish Farmers Producer Organisation (FFPOs) under Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana.
- Promoting Three New National-Level Cooperative Societies:
- Exports, Organic, and Seed production cooperatives.
- NCDC should be the first contributor of equity in the proposed umbrella organisation of Urban Cooperative Bank.