Cooperatives in Goa, India

Status

C.R. Garg:

"Goa has over 2700 cooperative housing societies, 1400 self-help groups, 182 dairy cooperative societies, 88 service cooperative societies, 85 consumer cooperative societies, 93 panipatap cooperative societies and 71 multi-purpose cooperative societies. The share capital of all these societies is Rs5.49 billion and the working capital is Rs108.21 billion. The deposits are Rs901.61 billion.

Another positive thing is that out of over 5000 societies, 52% are in profit and 42% are having no profit no loss. Only 5.7% of the cooperatives are in loss, where we are making efforts to convert them into profitable societies. The state government is taking all efforts to recognize the cooperative and have instituted awards for those who have made a great contribution. We award the best cooperative societies every year. There is a Goa Sahakar Ratna award with Rs1.25 lakh as award money, Goa Sahakar Bhushan awards with a prize of Rs75,000, and Goa Sahakar Shri with prize of Rs50,000. Apart from this, the government provides assistance of Rs50,000 to individuals who have contributed towards the cooperative sector. We also give award for best cooperative society. Apart from Goa government, National Cooperation Development Corporation has also instituted awards of excellence of Rs25,000 and award of merit of Rs20,000. These are given to primary cooperatives in the credit sector and to women’s cooperative.

To make the working of cooperative sector more efficient, technological intervention are encouraged with help of NABARD. Most societies have come forwards and NABARD is giving a grant of Rs3.4 lakh to each cooperative society for computerization of records and functioning. The apex bank – Goa State Cooperative Bank – is giving a lot of comfort and encouragement to the whole cooperative banking sector. It was founded in 1963 and now has 54 branches all over Goa. In 2012, the bank moved to core banking system and data center was launched. The bank is on NFS platform with 24 ATMs. It has opted for most of the services from NPCI. It has issued 29,000 EVM cards to its customers.

As far as the cooperative banking department of Goa is concerned, we recently launched a new version of our website www.coopgoa.gov.in and an online cooperative management system E-Sahakar was launched to facilitate ease of doing business. It will help the stake holders to get online registration of cooperatives. There are online modules for filing annual returns, annual reports, proceedings of AGM, etc. It will also help empanelment of chartered accountants online. RTI, public grievances and tracking/monitoring module are also available online. The complete computerization of the legacy database has also been launched so that the old records will also be available at the click of a button. So, this is what we are doing in Goa."

(https://bankingfrontiers.com/highlights-of-goas-cooperative-movement-achievements/)