{"id":36364,"date":"2024-03-09T11:52:38","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T06:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=36364"},"modified":"2025-04-21T20:11:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T14:41:25","slug":"primary-agricultural-credit-society-pacs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/primary-agricultural-credit-society-pacs\/","title":{"rendered":"Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>What\u2019s in Today\u2019s Article?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>About PACS (Meaning, Objectives, Benefits, Challenges, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Why in the News?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Union Cooperation Minister Amit Shah recently said that the Centre has decided to ensure formation of Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) in every village by 2027.<\/li>\n<li>Addressing an event, he said the <strong>Centre has introduced 20 new activities to be associated with PACS<\/strong>, enabling them to generate profits.<\/li>\n<li>The computerization of PACS has opened up many possibilities for their development, he said.<\/li>\n<li>He launched the National Cooperative Database and released the \u2018<strong>National Cooperative Database 2023: A Report<\/strong>\u2019.\n<ul>\n<li>The database aims to identify and address the gaps through a comprehensive analysis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>He said the work on the National Cooperative Database has been carried out in 3 phases.\n<ul>\n<li>In the first phase, mapping of approximately 2.64 lakh societies in three sectors, namely Primary Agricultural Credit Societies, Dairy, and Fisheries, was completed, he said.<\/li>\n<li>In the second, data from various National Federations, State Federations, State Cooperative Banks (StCB), District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCB), etc. were collected\/mapped.<\/li>\n<li>In the third, <strong>data mapping of all remaining 8 lakh primary cooperative societies in other sectors was carried out<\/strong>, he said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>After this, it was revealed there are over 8 lakh registered societies in the country, which are connected to over 30 crore citizens, he said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>What is a Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS)?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>PACS are village level <strong>cooperative credit societies<\/strong> that serve as the last link in a three-tier cooperative credit structure headed by the <strong>State Cooperative Banks (SCB)<\/strong> at the state level.\n<ul>\n<li>Credit from the SCBs is transferred to the <strong>District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs)<\/strong>, that operate at the district level.<\/li>\n<li>The DCCBs work with PACS, which deal directly with farmers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Since these are cooperative bodies, individual farmers are members of the PACS, and office-bearers are elected from within them. A village can have multiple PACS.<\/li>\n<li>PACSs <strong>provide short-term, and medium-term agricultural loans to the farmers for the various agricultural and farming activities<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Number of PACS in India<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The first PACS was formed in <strong>1904<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Currently, there are more than 1,00,000 PACS in the country with a huge member base of more than 13 crore farmers.<\/li>\n<li>However, <strong>only 63,000 of them are functional<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Why Are PACS Attractive?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The attraction of the PACS lies in the <strong>last mile connectivity they offer<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>For farmers, timely access to capital is necessary at the start of their agricultural activities.<\/li>\n<li>PACS have the capacity to <strong>extend credit with minimal paperwork within a short time<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li>With other scheduled commercial banks, farmers have often complained of tedious paperwork and red tape.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>For farmers, PACS provide strength in numbers, as most of the paperwork is taken care of by the office-bearer of the PACS.<\/li>\n<li>In the case of scheduled commercial banks, farmers have to individually meet the requirement and often have to take the help of agents to get their loans sanctioned.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Challenges Faced by PACS<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Since PACS are cooperative bodies, <strong>political compulsions often trump financial discipline<\/strong>, and the recovery of loans is hit.<\/li>\n<li>Many committees have pointed out various issues plaguing the cooperative system such as;\n<ul>\n<li>Lack of active participation by the members,<\/li>\n<li>Lack of professionalism,<\/li>\n<li>Absence of corporate governance,<\/li>\n<li>Bureaucratisation,<\/li>\n<li>Ageing and unenthusiastic employees.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Producer Organisation is a legal entity formed by primary producers, viz. farmers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":36365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}