Co-ops capacity needs to be improved

KATHMANDU, APR 09 -

Stakeholders have stressed the need to develop the capacity of cooperatives as the government has planned to commercialise agriculture through them. They said that lack of skilled manpower in many cooperatives had made them less effective. There are 5,348 agricultural cooperatives among more than 23,000 cooperatives in the country.

With the government describing cooperatives as a pillar of the economy, the budget for the current fiscal year has introduced farm-related programmes that will be implemented through them. However, the Department of Cooperatives (DoC) is not satisfied with the performance of cooperatives involved in agriculture.

“The performance of many agricultural programmes being implemented by cooperatives is not satisfactory except a few involved in milk and oil production,” said Bishnu Ghimire, under secretary at the DoC at an interaction on Saturday. “The cooperatives need to focus on capacity building to utilise government grants properly to help mass production and secure a market for their products.”

The government has been providing financial and technical support to cooperatives in line with its plan to put cooperatives at the forefront of investments in rural areas. The DoC has allocated Rs 140 million for cooperatives involved in agricultural production in a reflection of the government’s increased faith in cooperatives.

The DoC had released Rs 27 million only over the last three years to 93 cooperatives to invest in the agriculture sector including milk, tea, meat, coffee, honey and oil production.

People involved in agricultural cooperatives admit that their low capacity has been a major hindrance to meeting the objectives of the government.

Khem Pathak, president of the Nepal Agriculture Cooperatives’ Central Association, said the capacity of cooperatives at the grass-roots level needs to be enhanced so that they can function better to increase agricultural production. Although a majority of the cooperatives are concentrated in urban areas and they are profit-oriented, the government expects agricultural cooperatives in rural areas to help increase agriculture production.

“Now, even urban-based cooperatives are seeking avenues to invest in agriculture, education and hydropower,” said KB Upreti, chairman of National Cooperatives Bank.

“However, various government acts are not supportive of this trend,” he added. According to him, the bank has so far invested Rs 1.5 billion in 66 districts with the resources available from the Youth and Small Entrepreneur Self-Employment Fund, a programme of the government.

Source: Kantipur