Encouraged by the govt, the four leading cooperatives IFFCO, KRIBHCO, NAFED, GCMMF and govt subsidiary NCDC have jointly decided to launch the country’s first Multi-state Cooperative Export Society, aimed at finding market across the globe for produce and products of cooperatives in the country.
Interacting with media persons on Thursday, top Ministry officials explained the genesis and purpose of the new national co-op body. To be headquartered in Delhi at Amul’s Janakpuri office, the Cooperative Export Society will provide institutional support for aggregation of exportable domestic surplus, working capital, logistics, technical know-how and training.
Ministry officials say there are 8.54 Lakh registered cooperatives with more than 29 Crore members. Cooperatives are key to rural economic transformation and a need has arisen when cooperatives have to think globally and act locally to leverage their comparative advantage in all economic areas.
The five co-op bodies IFFCO, KRIBHCO, NAFED, GCMMF and NCDC will contribute ?100 Crore each and the society will have an authorized share capital of ?2,000 Crore. Its initial paid-up share capital of the Society is ?500 Crore. Besides the promoters, the new body will have its members from primary to national level co-ops, said officials.
The biggest of the three co-ops recently greenlighted by the Union Cabinet, the Multistate Cooperative Export Society is important because it will map the global market and set targets for Indian co-ops in terms of nature and quantum of their produce.
Some of its jobs would be to assess the International market demand and tap export potential of cooperative products/services. This will lead to Direct participation of cooperatives in the country’s exports.
It will also help in procurement, storage, processing, marketing, branding, labelling, packaging, certification, research and development etc. and trading of all types of goods and services produced by cooperatives.
The Ministry officials were confident that it will lead to an increase in exports of surplus goods & services produced by cooperatives and promote “Make in India” leading to Atmanirbhar Bharat. It will lead to more employment in the cooperative sector, they stated.
The Multi-state Cooperative Export Society will have support from all the relevant Ministries – Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Commerce and Industry. This society will help cooperatives actualize benefits of various export related schemes and policies of the Government of India.
Some of the representatives of these five bodies met informally this week earlier, as reported in these columns. The co-op body is likely to be registered soon. In the informal interaction on Thursday at the Co-op Ministry headquarters, representatives of co-op bodies involved in the project were also present.
