NAFCUB: Mehta offers inputs for New Co-op Policy; Govt listens

Giving inputs for the new Cooperative Policy, NAFCUB President Jyotindra Mehta said that the sector needs to start an Awareness Campaign to educate people about the benefits of the cooperative system and its values and virtues so that more and more people could associate with the cooperative sector and benefit from it.

Mehta was invited by the newly formed Union Ministry of Cooperation recently to make a presentation on the views of urban cooperative credit sector related to being incorporated in the New Cooperative Policy.

Those present on the occasion included D. K. Singh, Secretary, Vijay Kumar, Central Registrar, Abhay Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary (Cooperation), Dr. K. K. Tripathy, OSD to the Union Cooperation Minister. NAFCUB was represented by Mehta and D. Krishna.

Introducing the subject D.K. Singh informed that after the formation of the New Union Ministry of Cooperation last year, various activities have been initiated by the Ministry towards strengthening the Cooperative sector. Framing the new cooperative policy is one of such initiatives initiated by the Ministry. Strengthening the cooperative sector so as to meet the objective of ‘Sahkarita se Samridhi’ is our motto, he underlined.

It bears recalling that in order to seek views of various sectors of cooperatives, the Ministry is directly interacting with sectoral federations and other stakeholders.

Among other things, Mehta felt the present membership and customer base is too small to increase the market share of the urban cooperative Banking Sector in the Banking system. The Ministry suggested that awareness camps may be organized by UCBs/Credit Societies on a monthly basis to increase their customer base.

Mehta also batted for technology and said the latest Technology must be adopted by UCBs so as to provide digital banking services to customers. This would besides helping in compliance with regulators also help in attracting more of the young generation who are fully technology savvy and want all their requirements to be fulfilled online. Therefore, technology transformation is very important for improving the business of UCBs and Credit Societies.

Emphasizing women’s participation, Mehta said women constitute around 50 percent of the country and they must be encouraged to associate with the cooperative system. UCBs/Credit societies must endeavor to enroll more of Mahila as members and meet their financial needs to accelerate Financial Inclusion and inclusive growth, he said.

In the 75th year of its independence as Azadi Ka Amrit Mahautsav, large UCBs can come forward and help start-ups under the cooperative sector to promote it and generate employment.

In order for NAFCUB and Urban Cooperative Banking sector to promote cooperation and generate more employment during “Amrit Kaal”, we request all UCBs/Credit Societies to actively participate and promote the above-mentioned activities to achieve the objective of Sahakar se Simiriddhi propagated by the Ministry of Cooperation, GOI, concluded Mehta in his presentation