Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah on Saturday announced that the Union government will soon bring a National Cooperative Policy.
“The Union Ministry of Cooperation has taken many important steps for the cooperative sector,” Shah said while addressing the ‘Sahkar se Samriddhi’ (Prosperity through Cooperation) programme organised on the occasion of 102nd International Day of Cooperatives in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
Many dignitaries including Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, and Secretary, Ministry of Cooperation were present on the occasion.
Addressing the programme, Shah said the government has set a target that there should not be any state or district in the country where there is not a viable district cooperative bank and a viable district milk producer union.
He said only by doing this “we will be able to expand the cooperative sector and make every rural and poor person prosperous”.
“For this we have envisioned a Cooperative Panchayat.” Shah said.
Shah said even today there are 2 lakh panchayats in the country where there is not a single cooperative institution. He said, “We have set a target that in the next 5 years we will work to create multipurpose Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) in these two lakh panchayats.”
Shah said the Union government has also made model bylaws for PACS and despite PACS being a state subject, every state from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Assam to Dwarka has accepted these model bylaws.
He said the Union government has also worked towards making PACS multi-purpose and today, out of 65,000 functional PACS in the country, 48,000 have taken initiatives towards becoming viable by adding some new activity to themselves.
Shah said the central government has also formed three multi-state cooperative institutions – Organic Committee, Export Committee and Seed Committee – through which the path has been paved to enrich the lives of farmers.