Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah laid foundation stones and inaugurated various projects of the Haryana Cooperation Department in Karnal on Tuesday in the presence of Chief Minister Manohar Lal, among others. In his address Shah said that co-ops can prove to be ‘Sanjeevani’ for the poorest of the poor.
Inaugurating the Hafed Export House, a co-operative milk plant, Internet Radio ‘Sahakaritha Vani’ and offering NCDC’s loan amounting to Rs 10,000 crore to the farmers of the state, Union Cooperation Minister thanked the Prime Minister for forming a separate Ministry of Cooperation. Shah said that in about one-and-a-half years, the Ministry has made new beginnings in many fields. He said that first of all the work of strengthening Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) was started.
Referring to the national Cooperative Export House being set up by the Centre, Shah appealed that states should also set up their own export houses and those export houses should become members of the Government of India’s export house. He said that the Haryana government has made a very good start by beginning this work so soon.
Shah said the cooperative export house built with state-of-the-art facilities in Haryana’s Karnal has all features– testing, branding, bank linkage, letter of credit, etc. He said that till now HAFED has accomplished exports worth Rs.650 crores.
Lauding Haryana Dairy Development Cooperative Federation for launching many enterprises like animal feed, veterinary medicine and vaccination etc, he said that not only the poor would be associated with animal husbandry, there would also be a clean environment in the entire village and Gobar gas could also be produced.
Amit Shah inaugurated a co-operative milk plant at the cost of around Rs 200 crore. The plant has the capacity to process 5 lakh liters of milk per day and it will benefit many cattle farmers.
Apart from this, he inaugurated an ethanol plant at a cost of Rs 150 crore and with a capacity of 90,000 liters per day. He said ethanolblending had increased to 10% from less than 1% and would be further increased to 20% by 2025. He said that this would increase the income of sugar mills, APMC’s waste & waste paddy would be used and the country’s import bill would also be cut drastically.
Shah also launched Internet Radio ‘Sahakaritha Vani’ through which scientific information related to farming,
animal breeding and improvement in the quality of milk etc. would be available to the farmers from time to time.
Shri Shah said that the NCDC, running under the aegis of the Government of India, has today released Rs 10,000 crore to Haryana for various works of Cooperatives, which will be provided to farmers’ cooperatives on a low interest.
The Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation said that we have started a campaign to make the District Cooperative Bank NPA free. He said that in this year’s budget, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has set a target of a big scheme for the country’s cooperatives.
Under this scheme before 2025 PACS will be established in every Panchayat of the country and 2 lakh new PACS will be made. He said that since independence 65 thousand PACS have been made, and now we have set a target of creating 2 lakh PACS in the next 3 years.
This shows how big the scale of cooperatives is going to be. He said that the government has also brought in a new Cooperative Policy, and apart from this, 3 cooperative societies have also been formed by the Government of India.
