70,000 PACS to be computerised in 3 years – Business Information

The government is aiming to computerise 70,000 primary agricultural credit societies (PACS) across 30 states and union territories in the next three years to allow these farmers-owned entities access bank credits as well as a host of other benefits. An official with the cooperation ministry told FE that so far 24,000 PACS have availed the enterprise resource planning (ERPs) based common national software, which links them with NABARD through state and district cooperative banks.“After computerisation, these village-based entities are seamlessly connected with various departments.

It helps in accurate delivery of funds and subsidies through direct benefit transfer to the targeted beneficiary groups, besides providing financial services to un-banked areas and improving the efficiency of these farmers’ owned entities,” an official said. Currently there are around 0.1 million PACS in the country, of which 70,000 are “active”.

These have 139 million farmers as members. The cooperation ministry which is initiating the computerisation programme with a budget of Rs 2,516 crore aims to finish onboarding these entities by the end of FY27. The official said the focus of the initiative is to ensure that PACS evolve into entities providing a host of services such as grain storage, LPG cylinder distributions and common services centres.

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Meanwhile, an official said the government is planning to launch a nationwide programme to rope in dairy and fishery cooperative societies as banking correspondents to expand financial services in rural areas.The programme would leverage the existing network of dairy and fishery cooperatives to act as ‘bank mitras’ or banking agents by offering services such as micro-ATMs and lower-interest farm loans.