Kathmandu, Oct. 27
Minister for Land
Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, Balram Adhikari, has
expressed his commitment to gradually solving the challenges in the cooperative
sector and establishing it as a strong pillar of the national economy by
connecting the nation's income generation with the people.
"Cooperatives are
run by the old policy while Nepal's cooperatives cannot run by copying the foreign
styles. It is necessary to create a policy that suits our society,
consciousness and geography," he said while speaking at a Dialogue on
Cooperatives organised by the National Cooperative Federation (NCF) in Lalitpur
on Sunday.
There are problems in
cooperatives because no efforts were made to control wrongdoers by enacting rules
and procedures on time, he said.
He said that there was a
discussion to create a new regulatory body for the cooperatives as it was
necessary to solve the challenges that emerged in the sector.
Likewise, he informed
that a circular was sent to the Nepal Rastra Bank to include cooperatives in
the Credit Information Bureau of Nepal and the Deposit and Credit Guarantee
Fund that is currently in place for banks and financial institutions.
According to Minister
Adhikari, it seems that the campaign itself is in confusion regarding the
creation of the second-tier regulatory body. He urged everyone to come together
on how to go about it.
He expressed his concerns
that the cooperative promotion fund was to be returned to the cooperative
itself, but the cooperatives had stopped depositing funds in it. Minister
Adhikari said that problems in cooperatives were created because there were no statistics
on cooperatives even with the government.
"The Ministry of
Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation has asked all concerned
bodies to collect the data and send it to the ministry," he said.
President of the NCF, Om
Devi Malla, said that a campaign to enter a new phase of cooperatives has
started by establishing a common opinion between the government and the cooperatives
through policy dialogue.
Likewise, former Finance
Secretary, Rameshwar Khanal, said that cooperatives should strengthen
self-regulation rather than looking for an external regulatory body. He said that
the federation should lead the cooperative at the highest level.
He said that off-site and
on-site regulations could be made effective.
Shriman Kumar Gautam,
Chairman of the Cooperative Management Committee, informed that the depositors have
demanded Rs. 40 billion from 19 troubled cooperatives and the savings of two
organisations have been returned to the depositors.
Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 28 October 2024.
No comments:
Post a Comment