In an interactive session held with media persons on the occasion of the launch of “Ayushman Sahakar” scheme of National Cooperative Development Corporation MD Sundeep Nayak said, “In order to take the healthcare services to rural areas, we have set a target to reach up to 18k Primary Level Cooperative Societies (PACCs) because mostly farmers in the country are connected with the co-op societies”.
“As there are 95k PACCs in our country and about 35k of them are financially sound and well managed, we will target 18k PACCs to deliver the health care services in the rural areas. Though we have not set any business target for the near future, we aim to reach major parts of the country”, he underlined.
Nayak further added that, in the scheme the loan period term is up to 5-8 years and the interest rate is cheaper compared to banks and other financial institutions. We will lend credit either through the state government or Union Territories or directly to the eligible cooperatives.
The scheme, named AYUSHMAN SAHAKAR was launched by Union Agriculture Minister of State, Parshottam Rupala on Monday. NCDC would extend term loans to prospective cooperatives to the tune of Rs.10k crore in the coming years. The scheme was earlier set to be launched by Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar but due to his last-minute engagement, he could not make it to the event.