Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal, in his Budget speech, reiterated the State government’s commitment to protect Kerala’s co-operative sector, which has been in the limelight for the right and wrong reasons in recent years. While announcing the allocation of ₹134.42 crore set apart for the sector, he accused the Union government of making frequent overt and covert interventions to destroy the sector, which fulfils the economic needs of common people including farmers.
Out of the total allocation, an amount of ₹15 crore is provided for primary agricultural credit co-operative societies, while an amount of ₹6.05 crore is earmarked for the institutions under Co-operative Academy for Professional Education. An amount of ₹18 crore is earmarked for providing loan, share capital, working grant and subsidy to various co-operative institutions implementing vocational programmes.
Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe co-operatives got an allocation of ₹7 crore for various development projects, while Vanitha co-operatives and Vanithafed got ₹2.50 crore allocation. Funds of ₹30 crore have been allocated to the Co-operative’s Initiative in Technology-driven Agriculture (CITA). As part of assistance to cooperatives engaged in activities such as production, procurement, processing, grading and marketing of agricultural produce, an amount of ₹7.25 crore has been earmarked.
The Kerala Sahakarana Samrakshana Nidhi Project got an allocation of ₹11.15 crore. An amount of ₹28.10 crore is provided as assistance to Primary Societies, Consumerfed and Primary Agricultural Credit Cooperative Societies.
