Sahakar Bharati has welcomed most of the announcements made by Finance Minister Smt Nirmala Sitaraman in her Central Budget speech on 1st Feb 2021 pertaining to the Cooperative Sector and says many of its demands have been met.
Reacting to the budget, Uday Joshi, National General Secretary, Sahakar Bharati said “ Smt Nirmala ji has announced plans to extend EASE OF DOING BUSINESS NORMS to Multi State CoOp Societies which Sahakar Bharati had been requesting since long.”
FM has assured to organize a suitable machinery for raising funds for CoOps by issuing shares & bonds. Now co-operatives can raise capital by approaching the capital market, added Satish Marathe.
On the issue of Administrative Structure for multi-state, its leaders said Sahakar Bharati was constantly insisting on creating a separate Desk or Section in the Dept of Financial Services. The FM has assured to set up Administrative Structure for Co-ops which we hope will provide requisite inputs to the FM while formulating Co-op policies. It’s a welcome move, said Joshi.
“Besides, the FM has assured tax neutrality for UCBs while converting to SFB. We hope it’s not an incentive for conversion of UCBS to SFBs. It is expected to remove only hurdles in transferring Assets to SFB”, Joshi opined.
Adding further on the issue Satish Marathe said it is more a technical issue than real and it is not going to make much of a difference to the co-op bank movement. He said “so far as I can see only three banks- PMC, Raghavendra Co-op Bank and UP’s Shivalik Co-op Bank would go the way of small finance bank.”
Marathe, however, lauded the Finance Minister’s announcement on DICGC. She has assured depositors’ access to DICGC Funds to the extent insured. He said “though it is not clear yet, it seems now the DICGC would get active even before a co-op bank is closed down due to bad financial health.
