Address by Guest of Honor C.R. Garg, Secretary, Cooperation, Goa at FCBA 2021:
The theme of today’s summit – Agility for Stability. I hope the discussions today will take the cooperative banking sector to new heights and improve the professionalism in cooperative banks. You all are aware of the enormous socio-economic potential of cooperative movement, which is the largest ever community led socio-economic development effort in the world. It represents more than 8.5 lakh cooperatives with more than 300 million members across the country. The inherent strength of the cooperatives is inbuilt into their unique principles and values. In Goa, we have 5203 cooperatives working in the state with more than 14.35 lakh members. The population of Goa is around 1.5 million – so more than 95% of the population is represented one way or the other in the cooperative sector in the state. That indicates the penetration of cooperative movement in Goa.
Again, you might be aware, that recognizing the socio-economic potential of the cooperatives, the government of India, in July 2021, notified the creation of Ministry of Cooperation, as a separate ministry, which was earlier part of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare. Our honorable junior home minister is the minister of cooperation. We can see how much importance the government is giving to the cooperative sector. The mandate of the ministry of cooperation is to realize the vision of prosperity through cooperation, by offering a new thrust to the cooperative movement. The enormous economic potential of cooperatives can immensely contribute to our target of a $5 trillion economy. The cooperative sector has a great role to play in achieving that target.
We have started a program in Goa – Atamnirbhar Bharat, Swampoorn Goa – so that at the village and municipality ward level, the plans are made as per the requirements of the local people with complete cooperation between the government, the panchayat the municipality and the people at large. The government officials and other staff go to the villages to organize camps to take care of their day-to-day requirements. Rather than people going to government offices, the government officials go to the people. This was appreciated by the prime minister in a virtual interaction.
Goa has over 2700 cooperative housing societies, 1400 self-help groups, 182 dairy cooperative societies, 88 service cooperative societies, 85 consumer cooperative societies, 93 panipatap cooperative societies and 71 multi-purpose cooperative societies. The share capital of all these societies is Rs5.49 billion and the working capital is Rs108.21 billion. The deposits are Rs901.61 billion.
Another positive thing is that out of over 5000 societies, 52% are in profit and 42% are having no profit no loss. Only 5.7% of the cooperatives are in loss, where we are making efforts to convert them into profitable societies. The state government is taking all efforts to recognize the cooperative and have instituted awards for those who have made a great contribution. We award the best cooperative societies every year. There is a Goa Sahakar Ratna award with Rs1.25 lakh as award money, Goa Sahakar Bhushan awards with a prize of Rs75,000, and Goa Sahakar Shri with prize of Rs50,000. Apart from this, the government provides assistance of Rs50,000 to individuals who have contributed towards the cooperative sector. We also give award for best cooperative society. Apart from Goa government, National Cooperation Development Corporation has also instituted awards of excellence of Rs25,000 and award of merit of Rs20,000. These are given to primary cooperatives in the credit sector and to women’s cooperative.
To make the working of cooperative sector more efficient, technological intervention are encouraged with help of NABARD. Most societies have come forwards and NABARD is giving a grant of Rs3.4 lakh to each cooperative society for computerization of records and functioning. The apex bank – Goa State Cooperative Bank – is giving a lot of comfort and encouragement to the whole cooperative banking sector. It was founded in 1963 and now has 54 branches all over Goa. In 2012, the bank moved to core banking system and data center was launched. The bank is on NFS platform with 24 ATMs. It has opted for most of the services from NPCI. It has issued 29,000 EVM cards to its customers.
As far as the cooperative banking department of Goa is concerned, we recently launched a new version of our website www.coopgoa.gov.in and an online cooperative management system E-Sahakar was launched to facilitate ease of doing business. It will help the stake holders to get online registration of cooperatives. There are online modules for filing annual returns, annual reports, proceedings of AGM, etc. It will also help empanelment of chartered accountants online. RTI, public grievances and tracking/monitoring module are also available online. The complete computerization of the legacy database has also been launched so that the old records will also be available at the click of a button. So, this is what we are doing in Goa.
I again congratulate the awardees and wish them all the best.
