The Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Bank has embarked on an expansion program. It has moved into new areas to develop its business further.

The bank has established its three branches. The president of the bank opened these branches in an official ceremony.

The bank has netted over hundred crore as profits in 2011-12. Its annual turnover surpassed 10 thousand crore and deposits worked out to more than 3 thousand crore.

A flyer distributed by the bank claims the bank has extended crop loans worth 7 thousand crore and investment credit to the tune of Rs. 5 hundred crore.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has decided to commit more than Rs five thousand crore for various developmental activities in Kerala.

Nabard has set apart the lion’s share of the committed fund for agricultural development. Most of it will be handled by the cooperative banks in the state.

Apart from rural development, a sizeable fund would be spent on infrastructural development and warehousing facilities.

Nabard has also planned to spend a substantial fund on umpteen projects such as watershed development, livelihood issues and training of NGOS.

Marshaling of financial resources by Nabard is bound to quicken the pace of development at least in the Kerala countryside; knowledgeable sources are quoted as saying.

There has recently been a big increase in the price of milk in the country. Most of the dairy chains have hiked the price.

The Competition Commission of India will examine the price rise and its ramifications.   Minister of State for Corporate Affairs announced this in Parliament.

The government of India will take necessary steps to stabilize the milk prices in the country, the Minister added.

Readers could recall that milk prices have been hiked by double in recent years leading to hue and cry among consumers.

Milk industry sources say there is a big disparity between demand and supply in the country. The country produces nearly 12 crore littre of milk per annum while there exists a much bigger demand.

However, some commentators say if milk and its products keep getting pricey, this may pose a serious  health  problem for  those  who are just able to make both ends meet.

Word has it that the sugar industry may soon go liberal. The government of India has set up a Committee to consider the issue of decontrolling the industry.

Sources say all the stakeholders will be asked to give their views and opinions and while formulating its recommendations the committee will factor in them.

However, the leading sugar organisations including National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories are in not in favour of a complete deregulation. A major part of sugar production in the country takes place through cooperatives with the state of Uttar Pradesh topping the chart.

They want partial decontrol. But they would like to have some freedom to sell sugar in the open market as well as get spared the burden of providing sugar for the PDS.

The Central Information  Commission  has  ruled that  the RBI  and  other banks including cooperative banks in  the country  cannot refuse to disclose  their reports  on any ground whatsoever. According to the commission, they all are covered by the RTI Act.

The CIC gave its opinion   when a case relating to the Mercantile Bank of Kanpur came before it. A shareholder of the bank had wanted the copies of the audit report done by the RBI.

The CIC said the RBI’s refusal to disclose its report would contradict the very basic principles of democracy and transparency.

There are people openly alleging that the United Mercantile Cooperative Bank has become a hotbed of irregular activities. It is not without reason that the apex bank had to conduct the audit report of the bank, sources maintain.

Wife of a JDU Parliamentarian and former Chairman of a cooperative bank from Bihar has been arraigned on charges of violating the rules in appointing a clerk in a cooperative bank several years ago.

Sudama Devi was then the secretary of the district cooperative bank in Betiah.

She recently surrendered before the court and remanded in judicial custody.

It is noteworthy that she had been declared an absconder by a local court earlier as she was not appearing for trial in the case.
Informed sources say Bihar had been brimful of such irregularities in the past. In recent years, however, things have begun improving and frauds and scams are getting scarce.

Ever since the RBI has given Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank a clean bill of health, the bank is bubbling with new ideas and plans.

It is so excited that it has decided to venture into wholly new businesses. It feels its work with sugar and spinning mills is over. It has maxed out on this sector.

MSCB has begun preparing itself for a large-scale diversification into corporate financing, information technology, manufacturing and engineering, infrastructure and energy.

MSCB officials say even if the bank is largely withdrawing from the conventional businesses, it would not stop helping fisheries, floriculture, sericulture and food processing in the cooperative sector.

Aiming at sky GCMMF the giant dairy cooperative and owner of Amul brand has pledged to take its conglomerate to Rs 30,000 crore by 2020.

In a press conference in Hyderabad R S Sodhi, Managing Director, GCMMF said that nine new plants  will be set up in the next four years at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore. He was overseeing the launch of Amul Pro, a protein-rich beverage in Andhra Pradesh market.

R S Sodhi said the dairy products maker has plans to touch Rs 30,000 crore turnover by 2020. “In the next four years, we are investing around Rs 3,000 crore in setting up nine new plants and the capacity of the existing 40 plants will be increased,”

“We have 14.5 million liters per day capacity and it will reach to 18 million liters per day after the expansion,” he added. Sodhi said they increased the milk procuring price by almost 50% in the last three years to farmers in order to keep the activity lucrative. He said current generation of farmers is not finding milk business as viable and the situation may lead to depend on imports like other Asian countries.

“So we thought if we do not take up this seriously India will become like other Asian countries such as Pakistan which depend on import of milk. We took a lead and increased price to farmer,” he explained. According to Sodhi, the GCMMF currently pays including bonus Rs 34.40 for buffalo milk and Rs 22.50 for cow milk.

Replying to a query on exports to European Union, Sodhi said, and conditions such as using machines for milking is deterrent for exports. “In India you cannot get milk with milking machine… it is impossible,” he said. He said they expect the Rs 30,000 crore-target by 2020 will be achieved two year earlier.

While Minister talks of strict surveillance of cooperative banks, robbers remain unmindful of any threat in Tamil Nadu.

Just a day after the state cooperatives minister announced that surveillance cameras would be installed in all cooperative banks, a gang of burglars attempted to rob a central cooperative bank in the wee hours of Tuesday in Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu.

Rearders may recall that the Minister had said that strict security measures including the installation of surveillance cameras would soon be undertaken in all the cooperative banks in the state. All this will be  done to make the banks secure as there has been a sudden increase  in the number of crimes committed in the banks, Cooperation Minister S.K. Raju told the Tamil Nadu Assembly recently.

According to the minister, about 90 million rupees would be spent on providing a score of district central banks with core bank solutions.

Nearly hundred branches of central cooperative banks and urban cooperative banks would be modernised to bring them on a par with the commercial banks. Several agricultural cooperative credit societies existing on the perphery of Chennai would be raised to the status of urban credit societies, the minister announced.

Official sources claim, the performance of the primary agricultural cooperative credit societies in distributing crop loans in the state this year has been excellent.

Sources add the cooperative organisations are active in the tribal areas as well. They are putting in maximum efforts to market the produce of the tribal people.

The Cosmos Cooperative Bank, the second largest cooperative bank after Mumbai headquartered Saraswat bank bagged national award in NFS operational excellence recently.

It received the award from National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) in NFS operational excellence.

National Payment Corporation of India is founded by Reserve Bank of India to act as an umbrella institution for all the retail payment systems in the country.

Cosmos Bank received this national award as the Best Bank in Co-Operative Bank’s category.

Various parameters employed by RBI for selecting the best bank included ATM network uptime, zero fraudulent activities on ATM network, best dispute management and many other technical parameters.