Indian cooperative scene is going to be a deserted sight with who’s who of cooperative world heading towards Beijing on late Monday night on 30^th August. Cooperators and their associates are busy collecting travel documents and foreign exchanges to participate in the  9th ICA-AP Regional Assembly.

The event at Beijing will take place at the Beijing International Convention Centre (BICC) in Beijing, China under the auspices of All China Federation of Supply and Marketing cooperatives , ACFSMC.

The meeting of Regional Assembly will be held as per the conventional statutory agenda encompassing membership, influence, development and governance related issues mandatory for ICA.

Not less than 150 delegates will participate from India with NCUI, IFFCO, KRIBHCO, NAFED, NCCF and others joining the team.

The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) is a non-governmental co-operative federation representing co-operatives and the co-operative movement worldwide.

It was founded in 1895 as a result of actions by Edward Vansittart Neale and the Christian Socialists. The ICA maintains the currently accepted version of the Rochdale Principles of Cooperation and the Statement on the Co-operative Identity.

ICA represents 224 co-operative federations and organisations in 87 countries.

In 2006 the ICA published the first major index of the world’s largest co-operative and mutual enterprises, the ICA Global 300,which demonstrated the scale of the co-operative movement globally.

On the first Saturday of July each year, the ICA coordinates celebrations of International Co-operative Day.

The ICA consists of a 20-member governing board, a General Assembly, four regional assemblies (one each for Africa, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Americas), an Audit and Control Committee, and both sectoral committees and thematic committees.

In Beijing ICA’s Asia-Pacific regional assembly is meeting in the first week of September where our cooperative leaders have headed for.

Kerala cooperative minister G Sudhakaran inaugurated the two day seminar on problems of cooperative banks in India on Saturday in Thiruvananthapuram. This seminar is being conducted by All Kerala cooperative Bank employees association.

Though incidence of fraud and foul play keep trickling in from various quarters,this is also a fact that well meaning among them suffer from lots of handicap. This seminar will focus on the problems persisting in the Urban Cooperative Banks and the remedial measures for overcoming them.

C H Venkatachalam,  General Secretary of All-India Bank Employees’ Association, is the chief guest.  Around 500 delegates from 20 States are attending the seminar.

The seminar is expected to help improve the apparatus of Urban Cooperative Bank in India, said P Balakrishnan, General Secretary, All-India Cooperative Bank Employees’ Federation.

The Madras High Court bench here has directed liquidator of the defunct Madurai Urban Cooperative Bank to send a proposal to the Centre exploring possibility of paying dues to its depositors in preference to dues to be paid to Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC).

In their interim order on Thursdat on a batch of petitions filed by depositors of the bank on the issue, a division bench comprising Justice D Murugesan and Justice M Duraiswamy said the Government could act upon the liquidator’s proposal as expeditiously as possible and take an appropriate decision by invoking powers conferred on it under Sec 45 of the DICGC Act.

The counsel for the liquidator said Rs 15 crore was available for disbursal. But the entire sum should be given only to DICGC towards partial reapyment of a loan of Rs 22 crore taken immediately after the bank was closed down.

The loan was used for refunding a maximum of Rs 1 lakh to every depositor. Only after clearing dues to DICGC the liquidator could take steps to pay the depositors by collecting dues from the bank’s loan defaulters, he said. The counsel also insisted that the liquidator should not disburse the money available with him to the depositors without clearing the bank’s liability to the DICGC.

The bench, considering the fact that most of the depositors were pensioners and some of them even died pending adjudication of the writ petitions, said the matter evolved public interest and hence the Centre could take a lenient view in the matter in consultation with RBI.

The bank was wound up in 2005 after its financial position deteriorated due to various irregularities committed allegedly by its secretary and others. It was facing a loss to the tune of Rs 60 crore at the time of liquidation. Then it had to refund Rs 51.61 crore to depositors whereas its assets was only Rs 4.2crore including bad, doubtful and non performing assets.

courtesy: PTI

ERODE: Erode District Central Cooperative Bank Ltd has earned a profit of Rs 13.25 crore for 2009-2010 against Rs 12.05 crore made during the last fiscal, Bank sources said.

During 2009-2010 fiscal the share capital of the bank, with 28 branches, had increased to Rs 27.11 crore, an increase of 11.48 per cent compared to previous fiscal, P Loganathan, Managing Director of the bank said in a press release here today.

The deposits have increased to Rs 700.79 crore during the fiscal ending March showing an hike of 13.94 per cent than previous financil year, he said year.

After giving the gift of first revolving restaurant to the state of Bihar,it seems the good days of Biscomaun are here again.

Talking to the Indian Cooperative.com its Chairman Sunil Singh claimed to have turned around the Organization after taking over. Annual turn over increased from Rs 5 crores to 350 crores. Not a mean feat indeed!

But what signals the arrival of bright future for Biscomaun is acquiring the license to trade. Weighed done by the mounting sales-tax burden the Organization could finally get it by clearing the dues.

License is there but money for trading is still missing. It looks forward to government aid to start the business. Biscomaun Chairman Sunil Singh is confident of stopping all the black marketing of fertilizers in the pick season. If Biscomaun can store the stock in off season and give it to farmers at the time of need, how can black marketers sell fertilizer at high rate, asks Sunil Singh.

There is generally black of Rs 100 to 150 on urea in the pick season. We will store the fertilizers and would release it at the directions of the government , says the Chairman.

Converting the idle assets of Biscomaun, Sunil Singh has  put on rent 2 lakh square feet of Biscomaun on rent earning a rent of 50 lakh per month. He has also put cold storages on rent and restarted the idle brick factories.

Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister also look set to change the cooperative landscape of the State. After the successful PACs election, he has announced to initiate the appointment process in all the cooperative banks very soon.

Last recruitments in cooperative banks were made over 25 years back. As a result, these banks were facing staff crunch and it affected their working. There are about 300 cooperative banks in the state engaged in giving loans to farmers for agriculture and related activities.

The CM Nitish Kumar also announced to activate the Bihar State Cooperative Marketing Union (Biscomaun).

President of National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) Chandra Pal Singh has appealed women to join and strengthen the cooperative movement towards achieving social and economic empowerment.

Inaugurating the conference of women beneficiaries of the first unique project of NCUI at Shimoga, Singh said women alone can shape a better future for the movement, exhibiting their skill, power and commitment. He appreciated the efforts of women in two major projects started by the NCUI as per the direction of the government of India – one at Orissa and another at Shimoga – which have shown a model to others in the country.

Senior cooperators B S Viswanathan, Leeladevi Prasad, H K Patil and G T Deve Gowda and CEO of NCUI Anitha Manchanda addressed the women cooperators and honored self-help groups, which have done commendable work in the district.

The central government and the state government has sanctioned financial assistance to the tune of Rs 661 crore 14 lakh to the Primary Cooperative societies in the state. Besides financial assistance of Rs 13 crore 56 lakh has been sanctioned in favour of Central Cooperative banks.

As per the information of the Cooperative department the financial assistance has been sanctioned in favour of 2528 Primary Cooperative societies (PACS) . Out of which 1224 PACS are of A class and 1124 PACS are of B and C class. To revitalise the PACS the Central government has sanctioned Rs 593 crore 69 lakh 70 thousand 241 and the state government has sanctioned Rs 67 crore 44 lakh 14 thousand 725 in last two years. The Central Cooperative banks has been sanctioned Rs 134 crore 55 lakh 79 thousand. Out of 17 Central Cooperative Banks ,11 banks are running in profit and 6 are running in loss. The loss amount reached at Rs 48 crore 37 lakh 45 thousand.

The loss of Aska Central Cooperative bank is Rs 16 crore 34 lakh 44 thousand,Rs 12 crore 68 lakh 69 thousand of Puri-Nimapara Central Cooperative bank, and Rs 6 crore 92 lakh 90 of Bhawanipatna Central Cooperative Bank, Rs 3 crore 33 lakh 10 thousand of Boudh Central Cooperative Bank, Rs 3 crore 85 lakh 15 thousand of Mayurbhanj Central Cooperative Bank, and Rs 5 crore 19 lakh 87 thousand of Nayagarh Central Cooperative bank.

The Orissa High Court granted anticipatory bails to 24 officials and traders, including BJP leader and President of Orissa Consumer Cooperative Federation (OCCF) Golak Mohapatra, who were booked by the state vigilance directorate for their alleged involvement in multi-crore linkage coal scam in the state.

Justice B P Ray allowed the anticipatory bail pleas of all the accused persons with the condition that they will be present before the investing Officers when ever they require and cooperate with the prosecution whenever required. The investing officers will take action to reject their bails , if they violate the condition.

Among the accused persons who obtained the anticipatory bails are Srikanta Prusty IAS, President of OCCF President Golak Mohapatra, OCCF Managing Director Akhila Kumar Jena Officers of Orissa Small Industries Corporation (OSIC) , District Industries Centres (DICs) ,Orissa Consumer Cooperative Federation (OCCF)and authorities of Marketing /Trading Organisations.

Advocate Ashok Mohapatra for Golak Mohapatra, Advocate Pitamber Acharya for Srikanta Prusty, Advocate Bijaya Das for Akhila Kumar Jena, Advocate Dharani Naik for Marketing Agent Debendra Kumar Panda, Advocate Debasnan Das for Sangram Keshari Mohanty, Advocate Smruti Ranjan Mohanty for Sachinandan Mohanty filled advance bail petition. Advocate Srimanta Das pleaded for the vigilance.

In a severe indictment Bombay high court has found the, Chairman, directors and others guilty of fraud in the Memon cooperative bank of Mumbai. The Court has given green signal to the investigator to proceed with the investigations.

The court said in no uncertain terms that it is wrong to find Bank’s chief officer guilty while other dignitaries who may be the real culprits, go Scot free.

The Bank is charged with false representation of balance sheet. Justice J H Bhatia said that” It is impossible to accept that for all the frauds played by the bank, its chief officer is responsible, while the chairman, vice-chairman, other directors and special adviser go scot-free, when they may actually be the culprits,” .

In 2009, RBI filed a complaint against the bank, its chairman Imran Furniturewala, directors Umar Merchant, Shehzad Zaveri, Anwar Zunzunia, Nazim Furniturewala, Khizer Ahmed, Atta Khatri, Rafique Yusuf Ingaria, Shashi Kant Sharma, and special advisor Irfan Furniturewala.

No body thought Bhatol would be so lucky! Not, perhaps Bhatol  himself. The 21^st August meeting which was called by 10 members of GCMMF to discuss no confidence motion against Bhatol fizzled out. And it fizzled out so badly for dissident leader Mr Vipul Chaudhry that he hurried to leave the scene quickly.

No sooner did the board meet at the appointed time, Vipul Chaudhary objected to Bhatol chairing the meeting as he has lost the confidence of the board. An angry Bhatol retorted him and a free for all ensued.

Intervening in the melee Panchmahal-based Panchamrut Dairy chairman and BJP MLA Jetha Bharwad said that he was with Bhatol. And soon other Directors also joined him professing his support to the incumbent Chairman Parthi Bhai Bhatol.

How it happened . No body knows. May be Gandhinagar has a role to play. Or may be Bhatol’s clean image led to a change of heart in dissidents. With this the third attempt by Mehsana dairy chief Vipul Chaudhary to win the post of Chairman of GCMMF failed.

Chaudhary is eyeing chairmanship of country’s largest dairy co-operative since the time Dr Kurien stepped down from the post.

Ramsinh Parmar, the trusted friend of Vipul told media that the no confidence motion was shelved keeping the interest of farmers in mind.