Mumbai, July 25 (IANS) In the wake of a new cooperative policy announced by the Centre on Thursday, the Maharashtra government will soon formulate its own policy to consolidate state’s leading position in the cooperative sector by carrying out series of reforms.

A senior cooperation department officer on Friday said: “In line with the Centre’s new cooperation policy, the state policy will give emphasis on digitisation and computerisation of various cooperative bodies including the primary agricultural cooperative societies in a bid to provide seamless services. Enough attention will be paid on the use of Artificial Intelligence to further improve their functioning and streamline services. Further, the policy will focus on increasing the annual agricultural credit especially by cooperative banks from the present level of Rs 30,000 crore to Rs 60,000 crore by 2029. The policy will also pursue increasing the milk production to 1 crore litre per day from the present level of 60 lakh litre per day by 2029.”

The officer stated that Maharashtra is one of the leading producers and contributors to the national sugar production with the presence of over 200 cooperative and private sugar factories. The government will encourage use of AI in particular to increase the per acre production and productivity of sugarcane minimising the use of water.

In addition, there are about 455 urban cooperative banks in the state and the government proposes to bring in more professionalism in their functioning so that they become financially sound with less chances of entering into financial distress.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently announced that the government will amend the Cooperative Societies Act to align it with contemporary requirements.

Additionally, the government will come out with a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the cooperative institutions including district central cooperative banks and urban cooperative banks. He hoped that these initiatives will empower cooperative banks.

According to the cooperation department’s data, there are more than 2.2 lakh cooperative societies, 21,014 non agricultural cooperative societies, 455 urban cooperative banks, 31 district central cooperative banks, over 200 cooperative and private sugar mills in the state.

Short term agricultural credit, mainly for seasonal agricultural operations, is provided by primary agricultural cooperative societies. There are about 12,000 plus primary agricultural cooperative societies in the state which included 30 farmed service societies and 885 adivasi cooperative societies with about 67,000 and 7.4 lakh members respectively.

The government is currently engaged in the computerisation of these primary agricultural cooperative societies to make them self-reliant under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.

(Sanjay Jog can be contacted at sanjay.j@ians.in)

–IANS

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