The National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) proposes to provide Rs 400 crore to cooperatives and state governments in 1997-98 to expand the network of cooperatives. This will be part of the overall ninth plan outlay of Rs 2923.34 crore for the apex body, engaged in development of the cooperative sector.
The 1997-98 assistance plan is expected to be formally approved by the corporation at its 44th general council meeting in New Delhi today under the chairmanship of agriculture minister Chaturanan Mishra, who is also its president.
The meeting is likely to be attended by representatives of the Reserve Bank of India, State Bank of India, the Union ministries concerned, the state governments and leading cooperatives.
The assistance provided by the corporation in the past has resulted in the evolution of a vast cooperative infrastructure in the states, besides a storage capacity of 13.6 million tonnes in rural areas.
The corporation has been supporting programmes for the development of weaker sections by assisting them in taking up activities like fisheries, poultry, dairy, sericulture and handloom weaving. In the current financial year, it provided about Rs 56.2 crore for such programmes that constituted 17 per cent of its total disbursements.
NCDC has also been working to strengthen the cooperative marketing structure to ensure remunerative prices to farmers for their produce even while protecting the interests of the consumers. Agricultural produce worth over Rs 9,500 crore was estimated to have been marketed through the cooperative channels in 1994-95. This was over 28 per cent higher than the previous years figure of Rs 7,400 crore.
The cooperative sector marketing network now consists of 2,640 general purpose cooperative marketing societies covering all secondary mandis, 3,290 special commodity cooperative marketing societies, 157 district and central societies, 29 general purpose state marketing federations and 22 state-level special commodity marketing federations, with the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Fede-ration being the apex body at the national level.
