New Delhi: The center on Monday held a virtual consultation with 32 states and the United States in the new central scheme to modernize and digitize more than 97,000 main agricultural cooperative communities (PACS) spread throughout the country.
PACS, commonly known as the Agri-Cooperative credit community, is a village-level loan institution based on the principle of cooperation.
They provide short and medium-term loans to rural people to meet their financial requirements.
There are around 97,961 PACs throughout the country, anywhere worthy of around 65,000.
The meeting, chaired by the Secretary of the Union Cooperation D K Singh, was discussed in detail the central scheme proposed and sought advice from America.
Secretary of State Cooperation and Cooperation Registrants from 26 states and seven Union regions participated in the meeting.
“Many countries welcome the proposed scheme and say they are waiting for it,” a senior official from the Ministry of Cooperation, who was part of the meeting, told PTI.
The official said consultation with the state / UTS was to understand the budget needed for the proposed scheme which was likely to be implemented at 63,000 PACs that functioned fully throughout the country for a period of three years from 2022.
Some countries gave advice on the proposed scheme.
For example, the Telangana government emphasizes the need to educate members and senior PAC management about the importance of computerization.
The government of the omelet and Nagar Haveli suggested that every PAC must have a unique identity number for better PAC identification after geographical marking, the official said.
This is the second meeting of the Ministry of Cooperation of Trade Unions with America.
The first meeting was held with only three states – Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Karnataka – to get the flavor of functions.
Furthermore, the Ministry plans to hold a meeting with Nabard, which will be a coordination agent for PAC’s modernization under the proposed scheme, officially more.
At present, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Telangana have been completely computerized their PAC, while some countries have done a portion.
Certain countries such as Kerala have floated tenders for computerization.
Back in 2017, the government has moved a proposal to computerize PAC with a budget expenditure of 1,950 crore rs.
However, it cannot get a cabinet permit.
The new cooperation ministry was formed in July this year to strengthen the cooperative movement.
It is working on new cooperative policies and several central schemes.