Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies Vivek Agarwal on short notice called upon a meeting of co-operators through video conferencing in which representatives from not only top-level multi-state cooperatives were present but also those from cooperatives at state level were present.
The meeting was held on Friday noon and the objective of the meeting was to inform the cooperators of the launching of a financing facility of Rs one lakh crore under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday through video conferencing.
On the occasion, the Central Registrar urged the cooperators to disseminate this information to their members, farmers and other associated cooperative groups and ask them to join to make the program a big success. The meeting lasted half an hour.
The meeting was attended by NCUI CE N Satyanarayana, IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi, Nafed MD Sanjeev Chadha, Kribhco MD Rajan Chowdhary, Nafscob Chairman Dileepbhai Sanghani, Fishcopfed Chairman T Prasad Dora and MD B K Mishra, the representatives of state level cooperative marketing federations, NCCF and others.
It is being reported that the virtual event will be witnessed by lakhs of farmers and cooperatives across the country.
Meanwhile, one of the participants NAFSCOB Chairman Dileep Sanghani said to Indian Cooperative that, “We are happy that the central government is thinking about the co-ops and taking initiative in strengthening this sector. We have started disseminating the information through our members that are having direct reach with the farmers spread across the country about the launching of financing facilities by PM Narendra Modi”.
There are over 95k PACCS in India through which scores of farmers are directly connected.
It is being told that on the occasion IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi assured to circulate the information through its 3600 members cooperatives spread almost in all states. He also shared the details through his twitter.
Other participant such as Fishcopfed MD B K Mishra urged to make a simplified policy so that beneficiaries can easily gain the benefits. The procedure should be easy and the financing authority should not delay allocating funds.
The PM is also slated to also release the 6th instalment of Rs 17,000 crore fund to 8.5 crores farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme.
Readers would recall that the Govt in July had approved the setting up of an agri-infra fund with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore to extend subsidized credit for farm infrastructure projects. The agri-infra fund was part of the over Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package announced in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
The Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, the duration of which will be 10 years till 2029, aims to provide medium-to-long term debt financing facility for investment in viable projects for post-harvest management infrastructure and community farming assets through interest subvention and financial support.
