Kathmandu, Nov. 9
Past seven decades of the cooperatives movement in Nepal,
including the 30 years during the monarchy-led Panchayat regime, created a
glorious legacy of financial inclusion, community empowerment and savings
culture among the grassroots people.
The cooperatives is one of the two successful public
movements that Nepal could boast at the international level along with the
Community Forest Users Groups. Both the initiatives were launched during the
Panchayat era (community forest in late 1980s) but prospered in the liberal
economic and social environment guaranteed by the democratic regimes after
1990.
But the financial mismanagement, mobilisation of funds to
unauthorised sectors and fulfillment of personal greed with the public's
deposit by some medium- and large-sized cooperative organisations of late have obscured
the achievements made in the sector touted as the third pillar of the national
economy.
According to the Nepal Police, it has registered 212 cases
of fraud in cooperatives at the court, claiming more than Rs. 80 billion in
fines in the last three fiscal years. The police have arrested 411 while 1,397
are at large. Personalities ranging from lawmakers, local body representatives,
media entrepreneurs and ministers have been arrested and put behind bars in the
cases related to cooperatives.
Of more than 34,000 cooperatives in operation (as estimated
by the Department of Cooperatives - DoC) about 100 are considered as
'problematic' but these are the large saving and credit cooperatives (SACOS)
affecting hundreds of thousands of depositors. This ensued fear among the
general masses and an unprecedented cooperatives-run was witnessed in various
parts of the country.
According to the experts, many people who deposited the
money earned through illegal means such as bribery, black marketing, smuggling
and illegal trade in cooperatives have not come out opening or registered any
cases fearing the punishment under anti-money laundering laws or criminal acts.
Factors behind the crisis
What caused the debacle in the cooperatives that involves
about 6.5 million members and has about 3 per cent contribution to the national
economy by 2020?
"This is the result of indifference of and
non-adherence to the principles of cooperatives," said Rishi Raj Ghimire,
cooperatives expert and former President of Nepal Federation of Savings and
Credit Cooperative Unions Ltd. (NEFSCUN) who also served as an expert member in
the commission to investigate the troubled SACOS led by Gauri Bahadur Karki,
former Chairperson of the Special Court, in 2013. "Corruption in
self-discretion, loss in integrity, lack of regulation and greedy regulatory
authorities helped in aggravating the problem," he said.
However, the recent crisis has not emerged out of the blue.
By May 2014, the Karki-led commission had received 22,170 compliants from
12,962 individuals against 162 cooperatives claiming Rs. 10.08 billion. They
even complained that they were deprived of the interest on the deposits as
well.
The problems in the SACOS then were the result of
non-adherence to the values of cooperative, absence of timely and appropriate
policy and regulatory body, and lack of monitoring, the commission had
concluded.
But the government, Ministry of Land Management,
Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation (MoLMCPA), and the DoC paid no heed to the
recommendations to the commission. Interestingly, this was neither the first
nor the last dullness in their part. There were at least four probe
committees/commissions before it and at least two after that, all of them
recommended various measures to address the challenges in the sector and lead
it to the path of 'healthy business'.
There were problems in cooperatives when they were run as
'Sajha Programme' during the Panchayat era. Although there were few of them,
their 'sickness' is still visible in Sajha Publication, Sajha Health Service
and Sajha Yatayat.
According to Ghimire, the problems then were also the result
of poor regulation and monitoring and corruption by the officials.
The Parliamentary Investigation Special Committee on Misuse
of Co-operatives Saving formed in 2024 concluded that about Rs. 87.88 billion
has been embezzled by 40 cooperatives of which 22 are categorised as 'sick' and
18 have 'questionable practices'.
According to the House Committee, there is no problem in the
SACOS that are operated as per the norms, values and principles of cooperative,
and prevailing legal instruments. The problem is rampant in the SACOS that are
managed by the people who run the organisations as 'mini bank' in the disguise
of social activists and general consumers.
The root of the problem is the tendency to influence the
state power to make the laws in their favour with the deposits from general
customers lured with attractive interest and not letting even to recognise the
problem whenever there is any, concluded the House Committee led by lawmaker
Surya Thapa. The committee also blamed the government for protecting the
corrupt people in the cooperatives.
"It is the responsibility of the state to protect the
interests of the victims who are forced to die without treatment due to the
fact that they did not get back the savings from the cooperatives they earned
after selling their labour and sweat," read the report. It further said
that there is a kind of 'anarchism' as many of the operators of SACOS don’t
follow values, policy and system.
Poor regulation
According to the experts of the cooperatives sector, weak
regulation and monitoring by the governmental bodies, lack of professional
conduct and management within the cooperatives, and poor transparency and
accountability significantly complicated the problems.
"At times, there were collusions between the
ill-intended managers of the cooperatives and officials of the regulatory
bodies. They overlooked the multiple compliants and recommendations and let the
manager and board of directors siphon off the public's money," said
Paritosh Paudyal, Director of National Cooperative Federation (NCF) of Nepal.
According to him, within a decade since the country adopted
liberal stance on cooperative registration and operation in 1990, about 100
cooperatives had shut their business and run away.
Most of the professionals from the cooperative sector also
agree on the fact that the problems were created and exacerbated with the
mobilisation of investment in non-financial sectors including real estate, housing,
television and many others. Paudyal said that the cooperative should invest in
natural person not on legal entities like companies.
But large cooperatives like Gautam Shree, Surya Darshan and
Oriental mobilised the depositors’ money to real estate and media companies.
Large number of co-ops
Nepal probably has the largest number of cooperatives by any
means in the world. According to 2019 statistics, Nepal had 34,000 cooperatives
against 5684 in the United States of America, 2705 in India, 888 in Bangladesh,
79 in Australia and 567 in Canada. Cooperatives in Nepal are categorised into
various sectors including saving and credit, multipurpose, agriculture, fruits
and vegetables, beekeeping, tea and coffee, and consumers.
Such a large number of cooperatives are regulated by the DoC
with a very limited human resources and information technology infrastructure.
Furthermore, after the country was ushered into the federal
system, regulation and monitoring of cooperatives has been divided into the
three levels of the government but none of them has been able to monitor them.
The DoC says that it has the responsibility of only 147 large cooperatives but
it has long been failing to regulate even them. Meanwhile, the provincial and
local governments have neither proper infrastructure, human resources and skill
to regulate and monitor the sector.
According to the DoC, it would be able to perform the
regulation task if there were credit information bureau, credit tribunal and
periodic reporting mechanism for the cooperatives.
Responding to the situation, the then Minister for
Cooperatives, Padma Kumari Aryal in 2019 had suggested bringing down the number
of cooperatives to 12,000 maximum, and urged for voluntary mergers of the
organisations with similar objectives, coverage area and member base.
"But the government allowed the merger of a cooperatives
in different districts which helped them to collect the money from small towns
and villages and invest in real estate," said Rishi Raj Ghimire.
Likewise, Paritosh Paudyal said that the Bagmati Provincial
government has the responsibility of 2,400 cooperatives while it has only 24
staff at the ministry responsible for the regulation of the sector and most of
them are not trained for the job.
Meanwhile, most of the cooperatives have semi-skilled human
resources to run the business who are mostly submissive to their chief of Board
of Directors. In the past 62 years, the Cooperative Training and Research
Centre has trained 20,000 staff of cooperative. NEFSCUN also runs various
trainings for the staff of various level but given the significant HR turnover
and large number of employees, they are not sufficient, experts say.
Immediate solutions
Various committees and probe commissions formed to study the
problems in the cooperative sector and experts pointed out the need of a strong
regulation mechanism to purge the sector from the current maladies. Many of
them advocated the 'Second-Tier Institution (STI)' to regulate the sector but
some campaigners said that it would be another level of complexities added to
the system.
However, the STI has been mentioned in several government
policies including annual budgets and monetary policies of the Nepal Rastra
Bank (NRB) in the past two decades. Then Finance Minister late Bharat Mohan
Adhikari had announced to create a regulatory body for the cooperatives in
2005.
The dillydallying of the government is seen in cooperative
policy as well as it came after two decades since the country adopted liberal
stance to the cooperatives.
"What is the need of the hour is a strong and
autonomous regulatory mechanism including the representatives from the NRB,
chartered accountant, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Cooperative and
DoC," said Ghimire.
The cooperatives and experts have long been demanding credit
information bureau, strong IT infrastructure which would facilitate virtual
monitoring of business, promotion of mergers, deposit guarantee fund and
stabilization fund.
"Basically, the sector needs a new law with clear
definition of membership, work scope, forced merger, qualification of directors
and separate intelligence unit inside the regulator," according to
Ghimire.
Other suggestions include making the non-adherence to the
cooperative principles a criminal offence, running cooperatives as per two-tier
system keeping federal and local regulation and removing provincial structure
from it, and allowing the central federation of cooperatives to conduct the
initial monitoring.
The Cooperative Sector Reform Suggestion Task Force led by
Dr. Jaykant Raut, member of the National Planning Commission, last year
recommended conducting a detailed study of SACOS within six months but it went
in vain.
It also suggested conducting capacity building training for
all elected officials of cooperatives.
The cooperative policy also proposes for systematic and
external auditing, resolve of the conflict of interest, formulation of
standards, and effective monitoring from the associations. The Karki Commission
has also suggested for a powerful rehabilitation commission to settle the
problems of the sick cooperatives.
Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 10 November 2024.
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