Bhopal, Nov 27 (IANS) Experts at a workshop on strengthening of cooperatives here Friday agreed on a concrete action plan to promote cooperatives for deeper and sustainable financial engagement of the poor.
Experts from cooperatives, law, UN organizations, Training and Research institutions, government and microfinance promoting institutions were participating in a two-day workshop on ‘Enabling provisions in the Cooperative Acts for fast-tracking the financial inclusion in India’.

The workshop was aimed at developing a strategy and roadmap for strengthening the cooperatives by suggesting provisions to address the issue of financial inclusion and microfinance Organized by Microfinance Community of Practice, Solution Exchange and United Nations with the technical support of School of Law, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). The programme was supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), India.

The deliberations centreed around policy, regulatory, and legal issues that enable or hinder greater involvement of cooperatives in the financial inclusion of the poor, governance and operational issues that need to be addressed if cooperatives are to emerge as serious actors for financial inclusion. The talks were also on the current status of various government initiatives to revive and revitalize cooperatives in India.

Linkages between SHGs and cooperatives for accelerating financial inclusion and microfinance were also discussed.

Representatives from different parts of the country and from various key organizations including NABARD, MicroSave, IFFCO Foundation, APMAS, VAMNICOM (Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management), leading microfinance and livelihood institutions attended the workshop.

Sanjeev Chopra, secretary, agriculture, West Bengal, gave the example of AMUL, Gujarat, as a successful model in terms of providing benefit to the members as well as employees on each transaction.

Anand Kumar, Coordinator Solution Exchange, United Nations, informed the participants that the issue of cooperatives undertaking bigger role in financial inclusion has become more important as the year 2012 has been declared as International Year of Cooperatives.

Prof. K. Elumalai, Convener, Action Group, Cooperative Acts and Microfinance and Professor School of Law, IGNOU, gave a holistic view of the legal framework of cooperatives.