-By ArdorComm News Network
April 13, 2022
On Tuesday, Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah stated that “we must all accept professionalism and embrace all principles of corporate governance in a cooperative spirit.”
In his address to the national convention on cooperative policy here, he stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set the cooperative sector the goal of ‘Sahakar se Samridhi’ by creating a separate Ministry for Cooperation.
“If we are able to do this, then in the coming 20-25 years, we can take the cooperative sector to new heights and create a situation in which the cooperative sector should have a large share in the country’s development,” he added.
“We have to accept professionalism and embrace all principles of corporate governance with a cooperative spirit and while creating an economic model for rural development and providing employment to the poor people, so that they can live a dignified life, cooperatives to play a huge role,” the Minister said.
He also stated that for a large portion of the country that is economically backward, cooperative is the only model that can make 80 crore people financially prosperous in the country.
Describing that only cooperatives can achieve equitable profit distribution, where the entire profit goes to the stakeholders and management costs are kept to a minimum, cooperatives are the only way to achieve this.
Shah also stated that there are many models in our country, such as IFFCO and Amul, that have maintained the cooperative spirit while following in the footsteps of corporate governance.
“There are about 8,55,000 cooperatives running in the country today, 1,77,000 are credit societies, another 700,000 are cooperative societies, 17 are national-level cooperative unions, 33 are state cooperative banks, there are more than 63,000 active PACS and more than 12 crore members, and today around 91 per cent of the villages have presence of cooperatives,” he said.
Describing the need for a new cooperative policy, the Minister also stated that the impediments that exist must be removed by making new provisions, new policies, and harmonisation, and this can only happen if a cooperative policy is developed to meet all of today’s needs in a holistic manner.
He also stated that a completely updated cooperative policy will be prepared within the next eight to nine months.
Computerisation of the entire cooperative sector and modernisation and professionalism will also have to be brought in the working of big cooperative societies, he further said, adding that after the brainstorming in this two-day discussion will make a new policy.
Source: IANS