Network for the Development of Agricultural Cooperatives in Asia and the Pacific (NEDAC) is organizing a two day executive committee session in Colombo beginning Thursday.
Several cooperative bodies from India which include NCDC and NCUI are taking part in the session. NCDC Managing Director Sundeep Nayak who is the current chairman of NEDAC says that the aim of the session is to review progress and prepare a road map for 2020.
Sri Lankan State Minister of international Cooperation Susil Premajayntha, who inaugurated the event said that the govt sets great store by the cooperative movement and aims to involve more and more youths into the movement.
Headquartered in Bangkok NEDAC is a regional forum linking 21 apex cooperative organizations from 12 countries. In 2014 also Sri Lanka had hosted the NEDAC meeting.
Besides NCDC’s MD and NCUI’s Satyanarayan, cooperative representatives from India, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Philippines, and Kenya are taking part in the function. Pravir Krishna, MD of TRIFED is also taking part in the meeting.
Giving details of his participation in the event, Krishan tweeted “In Colombo, Sri Lanka for the UNFAO – NEDAC 
Executive Committee Meeting. TRIFED finds friends in Sri Lanka too and isn’t Sri Lanka just the way we are. It’s like being in any part of South India. Lovely city lovely people.”
NEDAC was set up in 1991 under FAO. The twin aims of NEDAC are to encourage intra trade through co-operatives of the member states and capacity building.
It bears recall that the dynamic leadership of NCDC’s MD Sundeep Kumar Nayak saw the revival of nearly defunct NEDAC last year. He not only convinced the foreign members but also the Indian govt that a cooperative to cooperative (C2C) business, on the lines of B2B is a good idea.
Nayak and his team decided first to host the General Assembly of the Network for the Development of Agricultural Cooperatives in Asia and the Pacific (NEDAC) and set the ball rolling. The General Assembly took place last November in Delhi.
The new agri policy of the govt came in handy for the NEDAC as Indian cooperatives made a fresh bid to increase trade volumes. In this series, NCDC organized a mega show (IICTF) in Pragati Maidan in Delhi this October. The first ever India International Cooperatives Trade Fair drew huge response not only from India but also abroad.
The three day Fair aimed at the promotion of export of products of cooperatives saw 36 countries participating in the Fair with more than 120 co-op organizations setting up their stalls.
