KARIMNAGAR, OCTOBER 23, 2024: Close on the heels of Union Minister for Cooperation Amit Shah’s initiatives to strengthen Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) in the country, the officials from National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) visited the Karimnagar District Cooperative Central Bank, which has emerged as a role model in strengthening of the PACS by taking up diversified business activities and ensured that all the societies run in profits.
Accordingly, Mr Afad Akbar, Assistant Manager, NABARD Telangana RO, Mr Abhishek Singh Chauhan, Assistant Manager, NABARD Head office, Mumbai, and Mr Aryan Saxena, BCG, and others visited the Karimnagar DCCB on Wednesday. They inspected various sections of the administrative building and main branch and interacted with the Bank CEO, general managers, PACS development centre resource person, and other officials.
Interacting with the NABARD team, KDCCB CEO N Satyanarayana Rao said that the Karimnagar DCCB was the first in the country to computerize all the PACS to ensure transparency and accountability. He also said that they were the first to diversify the PACS business by taking up multifarious activities to increase business and reap riches. They had converted PACS on par with the banks to provide all services including loans for housing, education, gold loans, MSME and other activities.
Stating that they had opened Common Service Centres (CSC) through PACS to provide digital services at the doorstep of the farmers in the villages, he said that they had opened retail petrol filling stations, RO plants, supermarkets, godowns, function halls, selling of fertilizers, seeds and more. He also reminded that the PACS also procure farmers’ produce by opening paddy procurement centres.
The NABARD team members said that they had visited the Karimnagar district to study the functioning of DCCB and PACS, which have evolved as role models in the country, as part of preparing an action for the PACS acceleration programme. They said that they wanted to give further a fillip to the strengthening of the PACS and fill the gaps if any.
Later, the NABARD visited Pothugal and Gambhiraopet PACS and interacted with its members and farmers. They had studied various schemes being implemented by the respective PACS including the Watershed programme by the Gambhiraopet mandal, which had helped in the increase of acreage of cultivation due to the availability of abundant water resources and recharging of ground water table. The team also inspected the procurement of paddy by the PACS in Gambhiraopet mandal.
NAFSCOB and Karimnagar DCCB chairman K Ravinder Rao joined the team in Gambhiraopet and explained the measures taken for strengthening of the PACS in the district. NABARD Karimnagar DDM Jayaprakash, KDCCB general managers B Sridhar and Md Riazuddin, DGMs N Satyaprasad and Brahmanandam, AGMs Mirza Imtiaz Baig, T Nagaraju and G Mahesh, PACS Development Centre Resource Person G Satyanarayana and others were also present.
