Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday will launch the Rs 225 crore-project envisaging computerisation of offices of the Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (ARDBs) and the State Registrar of Cooperative Societies (RCSs) across the country at an event here.
This initiative, part of a broader digitalization effort, targets 1851 units of ARDBs in 13 States/UTs aims enhancing efficiency, promoting transparency, and ensuring uniformity in operations, ultimately enabling quick access to services and saving time for both administrators and the public.
The implementation involves linking these units with NABARD through a national unified software, marking a significant step in modernizing the country’s cooperative banking sector.
“Furthermore, the initiative aims at reducing transaction costs, facilitating loan distribution to farmers, and enabling real-time data access for better monitoring and assessment of schemes.
“This will benefit small and marginal farmers, connected with ARDBs for credit and related services through Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACSs) at the grassroots level,” said an official from the Ministry.
During the event being jointly organized by the Ministry and national cooperative lender National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC), the Minister will also launch computerization of offices of the RCS in all States and Union Territories, motivating them for e-functioning and implement an IT-oriented workflow by the Cooperative Acts and Regulations of the States and Union Territories.
Along with this, its targets also include better efficiency, accountability, and transparency in RCS offices, setting up analytics, and ensuring linkage with the national database.
The Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACSs) are also being enabled to start digital services by taking them on board as Common Service Centers (CSCs). So far more than 50,000 PACSs have been onboarded as CSCs and over 30,000 have already started providing services.
In addition to this, the Ministry has set up a new National Cooperative Database containing data from more than 8 lakh cooperative societies, and this database will be launched soon and made available to all stakeholders.
This initiative is in line with the Government’s comprehensive strategy to modernize the cooperative sector and enhance efficiency by bringing the entire cooperative ecosystem on a digital platform, the official added.