Union home minister Amit Shah, who also holds the cooperation portfolio, on Saturday mentioned that the Centre will quickly unveil a new cooperative policy that will entrust the major agriculture cooperative societies (PACS) with the process of implementing many government schemes in the farm sector.
The government is also preparing to facilitate the creation of more PACS so that one such entity is present in each two villages.
“There is a role for PACSs in [running] many farm-related schemes like electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) and soil health card scheme. Benefits of all these schemes will reach the ground level when PACS is made implementing agencies at village levels,” Shah mentioned even though addressing the initially National Cooperative Conference in New Delhi.
The newly produced cooperation ministry is also taking into consideration a proposal to convert PACS as farmer producer organisations, he added.
Shah mentioned PACS would be strengthened, and states would be requested to make important adjustments in their laws by way of advisories. Pointing out that the existing quantity of PACS is extremely insufficient, Shah mentioned: “The Centre will create necessary legal framework to increase the number of PACS to 3 lakh from current 65,000… One of the major issues is the current legal provision that disallows formation of a new PACS until the existing cooperative is wound up once it goes bankrupt.”
Just about two decades ago, credit cooperatives covered 69% of the rural credit outlets and their share in rural credit was pretty impressive, at 45% of the total rural credit in the nation, NABARD chairman G R Chintala wrote in FE last month. As their share in rural credit is just 12.26% (in FY19), a lot of discussion inside NABARD and RBI is going on to verify the continuous sliding.
“But a PACS, to really make a difference, will need to first transition from being just a credit society to a multi-service centre (MSC) and turn into a one-stop shop for both goods and services,” Chintala recommended. NABARD is presently implementing a project to create 35,000 PACS into MSCs on mission-mode.
Addressing the gathering of more than 2,one hundred representatives of unique cooperatives from across the nation, the minister mentioned the government would quickly come out with a new cooperative policy soon after two decades. The existing policy was authorized in 2002.
On the criticism about making a separate ministry of cooperation even although it is a state topic, Shah mentioned: “There could be a legal response to it, but he does not want to get into this argument.”
The Centre, he stressed, will cooperate with states and there will be no friction.
The government will also assistance the current national level cooperatives if they expand to other sectors, Shah assured the sector’s representatives and added that various adjustments in the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act would be made in the close to future.
As reported by FE earlier, the Union government might propose a Constitutional amendment in order to bring cooperative societies beneath the Concurrent List, not getting dissuaded by a Supreme Court ruling that state-level societies are inside the exclusive remit of the state legislatures even though Parliament can make laws pertaining to multi-state co-operatives.
The move is seen as a prerequisite for the newly formed ministry of cooperatives to meet its ambitious objectives.