Cooperative Revolving Fund

Sahavikasa has built the Cooperative Revolving Fund (CRF), since 1978 through contributions from donors and surplus allocations. Cooperative Revolving Fund as the name suggests, is a revolving fund made available to cooperatives to develop their member services. Earlier CRF was to help a PACs provide credit services to small and marginal farmers and the land-less, to help PACs serve the credit needs of heterogeneous membership. At the initial stages, these non-financial services did not envisage produce-marketing services and, therefore, the CRF was used more for input supply and consumer services through PACs.

In 1983, realising the need for introduction of marketing services Sahavikasa requested for and received in 1984 and 1985 a major grant of about Rs 21 lakhs from as Cooperative Union of Canada (CUC) for the establishment of rice mills in member cooperatives. Project feasibility reports were prepared in 1983, prior to the receipt of the CUC grant and Sahavikasa agreed that CRF would primarily support the establishment of produce processing and marketing activities in PACs with:

• Better returns to the number
• Financial stability in the cooperative
• Fixed assets in the cooperative
• Increased member and other internal funds in the cooperative

In 1985, at Sahavikasa`s request, the Delhi office of the National Cooperatives Business Association (NCBA) of USA, then known as the Cooperative League of USA (CLUSA), helped Sahavikasa conduct a workshop of CRF users which resulted in the development of a clearer vision of the CRF and of better project appraisal mechanisms. In 1986, Shri Robert Hebb visited Sahavikasa, and its member cooperatives on behalf of Cooperative Union of Canada (CUC) to evaluate the use of the CUC grant for the establishment of rice mills. The CRF was reviewed at a vision-building workshop in 1997. The planning workshop recommended that Sahavikasa work at increasing the size of the CRF, with grants as well as soft loans.

Currently, CRF is made available to cooperatives for projects like construction of office buildings by cooperatives and their association, construction of godowns, establishment of seed processing plant and seed procurement by paddy seed growers cooperavites, construction of milk processing plants by women`s dairy cooperatives, etc.

News & Events

Various forms of cooperation have existed from the very beginnings of the human race, but it was the pioneers of Rochdale, England, who worked out their aims and purposes, and commited them to paper in 1844 in a form which identified nine specific rules.