New Delhi: The financial assistance in form of loans and grants by National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) to the Cooperative Societies and Federations across Gujarat has witnessed a sharp jump of around 1470% in the last two years. The financial assistance provided by NCDC to the Cooperative Societies/Federations went up from Rs 37.40 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 586.99 crore in 2023-24. There are total of 82,143 registered Cooperative societies in Gujarat as per the data available under National Cooperative Database (NCD) portal. The information was provided by Union Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah in the Rajya Sabha on July 24, 2024 while replying to a question raised by RS MP Parimal Nathwani.

The minister also stated that the NCDC provides financial assistance to Cooperatives Societies/ Federations across the country. As per the information received from NCDC, in the last three years, the total amount disbursed as loan is Rs 1,34,670.90 crore while the total amount disbursed as grants is Rs. 1,200.04 crore, state the minister.

According to the statement of the minister, to strengthen PACS, a project for Computerisation of functional PACS with a total financial outlay of Rs 2,516 crore has been approved by the Government of India, which entails bringing all functional PACS in the country onto a common ERP based national software, linking them with NABARD through State Cooperative Banks (StCBs) and District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs). A total of 67,009 PACS from 30 States/ UTs have been sanctioned under the project. The hardware has been procured by 28 States/UTs. A total of 25,674 PACS have been onboarded on ERP Software and 15,207 PACS have gone live, said the statement of the minister. As per the statement, the GOI share amounting to Rs 654.22 crore was released to 29 States/UTs in the years 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 for procurement of hardware, digitization, and setting up of support system.

Nathwani wanted to know about the number of Cooperative Societies registered in the country, the steps taken by Government for revitalising, bringing transparency, modernising, creating competitiveness and capacity building of cooperative societies and the financial assistance provided by Government for capacity expansion of these societies after the formation of a separate Ministry.

According to the statement of the minister, Ministry of Cooperation, since its inception on 6th July, 2021, has undertaken several initiatives to realize the vision of “Sahakar-se-Samriddhi” and to strengthen & deepen the cooperative movement from Primary to Apex level Cooperatives in the country. The initiatives include Model Bye-Laws for PACS making them multipurpose, multidimensional and transparent entities, strengthening of PACS through computerisation, and establishing new multipurpose PACS/ Dairy/ Fishery Cooperatives in uncovered Panchayats. The ministry has also launched schemes like World’s Largest Decentralized Grain Storage Plan in Cooperative sector, PACS as Common Service Centres (CSCs), and Formation of new Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) by PACS. The other initiatives of the cooperation ministry also include PACS as PM Bharatiya Jan Aushadhi Kendra, PACS as Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samriddhi Kendras (PMKSK), Convergence of PM-KUSUM at PACS level, Micro-ATMs to Bank Mitra Cooperative Societies, Rupay Kisan Credit Card to Members of Milk Cooperatives, Formation of Fish Farmer Producer Organization (FFPO), etc. to name only a few.  DeshGujarat