Sundeep Nayak, Managing Director of National Cooperative Development Cooperation (NCDC), has once again been re-elected unopposed as Chairman of Network for the Development of Agricultural Cooperatives in Asia and the Pacific (NEDAC) in an election held through video conferencing on Saturday.
K B Upreti, Chairman of National Cooperative Bank, Nepal and M.S.M. Riyas, Chairman of Cooperative Youth Employment Society Limited has been re-elected as Vice-Chairman of NEDAC. George Magutu, Kenya Union of Saving and Credit Cooperative has been elected as Co-Chairman. The term of the board is two years.
It is worth mentioning that the nearly defunct NEDAC has revived under NCDC’s MD Sundeep Kumar Nayak’s dynamic leadership.
All other office bearers of the executive committee of Nedac have been re-elected again. Only Christie Plantila, CEO, Federation of Peoples Sustainable Development Cooperative (FPSDC), Philippines is the newcomer to the board.
From India, NCUI CE N Satyanaryana, Fishcopfed Managing Director B K Mishra and others re-elected to the board of NEDAC.
Besides, 12 committees were formed and several veteran leaders have managed to annex top positions on the committees. Gujcomasol and Nafscob Chairman Dileepbhai Sanghani has been elected as Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture Cooperatives and Food Security in NEDAC.
Uttarakhand Cooperative Minister Dhan Singh Rawat has been elected as Chairman of the Committee on LiveStock Cooperatives.
The remaining committees are supposed to deal with the pandemic, climate action and SDGs, fisheries cooperatives, Dairy Cooperatives, Social Solidarity Economy, and with emerging technologies and threats.
Discussions were held on the development of cooperative networks in the Asia-Pacific region. Uttarakhand Co-op Minister Dr Dhan Singh Rawat, Nepal’s minister for land management, cooperatives and poverty alleviation, Padma Kumari Aryal, Nafcub Chairman Jyotindrabhai Mehta, IFFCO’s Joint General Manager (Cooperative Relation) Tarun Bhargava, ICA-AP Regional Director Balu Iyer and others took part in the discussions. The meeting lasted about three hours.
The NEDAC was set up in 1991 under the aegis of FAO. The twin aims of NEDAC are to encourage intra trade through co-operatives of the member states and capacity building
Headquartered in Bangkok NEDAC is a regional forum linking more than 60 cooperative organizations from 12 countries.
