Echoing similar views, Mr Dileep Sanghani, President National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI), said that Ministry formation will help strengthen the cooperatives across the country even as he was full praise of the NCDC MD’s efforts in promoting the cooperatives as a corporator himself. Mr Sanghani too felt that the youths of the country need to be encouraged to see co-operative as a futuristic model of growth and prosperity. “Cooperative should be taken up as a movement so that local people are economically empowered to attain the dream of Atma Nirbhar Bharat,” he added.

Mr Jyotindra M Mehta, President, The National Federation of Urban Cooperative Banks and Credit Societies Ltd. (NAFCUB), touched upon tax-related issues in the sector in India and was keen to know the benefits and disadvantages faced by them because of levying of taxes.
Mr Nayak later shared with the ICA President details about the functioning of the Corporation and how various schemes launched by the NDA Government in the past few years aim to put cooperatives in the centre stage in making India a USD 5 trillion economy. NCDC has recently taken many other initiatives such as Yuva Sahakar, Sahakar Mitra, Ayushman Sahakar, Sahakar Pragya etc., to address the needs of cooperatives operating in various sectors.

He also shared that in the present day cooperative organizations are functioning in about 91 per cent of the villages in the country. There are more than eight-and-a-half lakh credit cooperatives while the number of non-lending cooperatives is more than 60 lakh. Also, there are more than 17 national level cooperative unions, 33 state level cooperative banks while the number of district level cooperative banks is 363.