Dr Bijender Singh, Chairman, National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED), has said that NAFED has been generating profits for the last four years and as a result of continued improved performance since 2016-17, its net worth has become positive during 2020-21. He was speaking at the 64th Annual General Body Meeting (AGM) of NAFED held in New Delhi on September 17.
The Chairman also announced that the Board of Directors had proposed a dividend of 15 per cent to the member Federations/Societies for the year ending 2020-21. This information was shared by NAFED in a press release.
Welcoming the participants, Dr Singh thanked Union Minister of Agriculture Narendra Singh Tomar, MoS for Agriculture Kailash Choudhary, and Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Parshottam Rupala, among others, for their constant guidance and support to NAFED from time to time and reposing confidence in NAFED by entrusting various tasks.
Dr Singh assured the Government that NAFED would strive hard to accomplish the tasks assigned by the Government to the best of its ability. He also extended his gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for creating a separate “Ministry of Cooperation” and giving it under the able and dynamic leadership of Amit Shah. The creation of a separate Ministry will not only address the issues of the cooperative movement promptly but also boost the cooperative sector, including agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, fisheries, sugar and many more, which are directly connected to the farmers.
IFFCO in coordination with NCUI, KRIBHCO, NAFED, AMUL and other cooperative institutions is organizing a “National Cooperative Conference” on September 25 at the Indraprastha Indoor Stadium, New Delhi, to deliberate as to how to increase the role of the cooperative sector in the overall development of the country.
Sanjeev Kumar Chadha, Managing Director, tabled a brief of activities carried out by NAFED during 2020-21. During the year, the Federation achieved a turnover of Rs 36,894.95 crore with a net profit of ₹ 243.89 crore. NAFED continues to be one of the Central nodal agencies of the Government of India (GoI) for procurement of oilseeds and pulses under the Price Support Scheme, in addition to maintaining buffers of pulses on its behalf.
During 2020-21, a quantity of 34.56 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) of oilseeds and pulses valuing over ₹ 17.413.09 crore was procured, which also includes the procurement of pulses of the order of Rs 529.76 crores under the Price Stabilization Fund (PSF) for buffer stocking on behalf of GoI.
NAFED supplied a quantity of 18.76 LMT of processed/whole pulses to the Armed Forces and State/UT Governments under various schemes to mitigate the hardship of poor people covering around 20 crore households.
Besides, NAFED has been appointed as the National Implementing Agency under the mission for the formation of 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. NAFED took over the Federation of Indian FPOs and Aggregators (FIFA) with the aim to support the farmers by providing them market linkages and post-harvest infrastructure.