Cooperative Sector Expansion: New Avenues in 2023

New Delhi, Dec 31 (PTI) The year 2023 saw a newly set up cooperation ministry coming out with several initiatives including model bye-laws for making PACS multipurpose and a national cooperative body to promote exports in a bid to give further boost to the cooperative movement and open new avenues for the cooperative societies for expansion.

Set up in July 2021, the new ministry under the leadership of Amit Shah took historical steps for strengthening the cooperative sector in a short span of time, an official statement said.

"To strengthen the cooperative movement, the Ministry of Cooperation has taken 54 major initiatives, through which all cooperative societies are getting new possibilities for their economic development and expansion," it said.

Among the key initiatives taken this year, the ministry said it came out with a draft Model Bye-Laws for Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) on January 5, 2023, in order to increase their source of income and create new employment opportunities in more than 25 new sectors.

"So far, they have been adopted by 31 States/Union Territories and the work of adoption in other States is in progress," it said.

A separate scheme was launched to set up new multi-purpose PACS, dairy and fishery cooperative societies at Panchayat and village level which were not covered so far. Under this scheme, the work of formation of 9,961 new multipurpose PACS/Dairy/Fisheries Cooperative Societies is going on in 23 states and UTs.

The world's largest foodgrain storage scheme was approved for the sector during the year and currently a pilot project is going on in 24 PACS of 24 states and UTs Territories with the cooperation of the states, out of which construction work has started in 13 states. Further, 1,779 PACS have been identified in 27 States/UTs for participation in the second phase of the pilot scheme.

Further, PACS were allowed to operate as Common Service Centres (CSCs) for better access to e-services, establish new farmer producer organisations (FPOs), operate LPG distributor/retail petrol outlet and Jan Aushadhi Kendra and Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samridhi Kendra among others.

The government also established three national-level cooperatives to promote exports, certified seeds, and organic farming. The Multi-State Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Act 2023 which aims to strengthen governance, increase transparency and accountability, improve election process, etc in multi-state cooperative societies was also passed in August 2023.