In a strange way, Amul farmers are better off in the wake of demonetization of higher currencies and GCMMF Managing Director R S Sodhi has no words to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for this. What we tried to do on umpteen occasions in the past but could not succeed due to vested interests of the societies’ secretaries, has been solved in one clean sweep of the PM, Sodhi said.
There are about 18 thousand societies connected to GCMMF, the apex body of several milk unions in Gujarat. Every week about Rs 450 crore are disbursed to these societies through RTGS, informs MD Sodhi. But these societies would not do e-transfer but would give only cash to members in the past.
In the wake of the cash crunch these societies are forced to resort to do RTGS to dairy farmers most of whom had opened bank accounts during the jandhan yojana campaign but never used them.
In Sodhi’s words “We are witnessing a totally unexpected but a positive change. Our 18000 societies were disbursing about Rs 450 cr per week i.e. Rs 2-3 lac per society in cash to Milk producers. As long as it was the society’s account it was RTGS and later it became cash transaction.”
“With this limit of withdrawal of maximum Rs 10000 per week per account, the societies are forced to transfer money in milk producers inactive accounts opened during Jan Dhan Yojnan ”, Sodhi adds. GCMMF MD also said banks are coming forward to open new accounts and issuing cheque books.
“Earlier we tried to do this but due to vested interests of the societies’ secretaries, this did not succeed”, he said.
No doubt there are a few problems but I feel in some days things will settle down. By the way, neither our procurement nor our sales of milk have suffered, Sodhi remarked underlining unnecessary media noise on the issue.
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At Igloo Dairy we have been transferring directly to the farmers by RTGS by-passing traders and Primary Societies. Amul could also drill down to the farmers directly for the payments.