Karimnagar: Centre urged to support cooperatives

KARIMNAGAR: National Federation of State Cooperative Banks limited chairman Konduru Ravinder Rao has urged the Union government to support cooperatives to achieve overall prosperity in the country through the mantra of "Sahakar se Samridhi" (prosperity through cooperation).

Welcoming the constitution of the Union Ministry of Cooperation to strengthen the cooperative movement in the country, he said that the government was formulating a new National Cooperation Policy and collecting opinions from its stakeholders.

The NAFSCOB chairman was participating as chief guest at the two-day national workshop on Banking Regulations (Amendment) Act 2020 and Management of State Cooperative Banks. Stating that the regulatory changes under the Banking Regulation Act have put forth many challenges for the rural cooperative banks particularly in terms of statutory provisions and regulatory compliances, the NAFSCOB chairman said that there was a need to understand the regulatory aspects, policy concerns, structural issues for State cooperative banks (SCB).

This requires extensive deliberations on key issues with all the stakeholders to develop an understanding in terms of policy level issues, Rao said and added that the deliberations in the conference will enable in preparation of draft documents to give necessary policy inputs to policymakers (Union Ministry of Cooperation). He said that the national workshop would identify and discuss implementation issues of BR Act, 2020 and the need for structural reforms in the functioning of SCBs and also identify the issues and challenges in effective technology adoption and governance.

Eminent personalities from the cooperative sector have participated in the two-day workshop and discussed various issues on BR Act and further strengthening of the cooperative sector. Mr Satish Marathe, Director, Central Board of RBI, spoke on "the BR Regulation Act, 2020 and its implementation and challenges for SCBs", Mr KV Shahji, Deputy Managing Director, NABARD, spoke on "Need for structural reforms in the functioning of SCBs", Mr Bhima Subramanyam, MD NAFSCOB, talked on "Policy area of concern for SCBs and road ahead", Mr Ravikiran Mankikar, Advisory Consultant, IT and Security, discussed about "Technology adoption and governance issues before SCBs" and Dr Naveen Kumar Chaudhary, Dean School of Cyber Security and Digital Forensic discussed on "Cyber security threat and its solutions".