Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Gurdaspur, March 28
Several initiatives aimed at fiscal prudence taken by the Punjab Cooperatives Department have reduced by nearly 50 per cent the Rs 809.85-crore debt accumulated by Markfed from banks over the last more than six decades.
Markfed, considered to be Asia's leading cooperative marketing society, was established in 1954 and by April 4, 2018, it had run up a massive debt. The financial liability acted as a trigger to set off a series of measures aimed at saving the organisation. Among the initiatives taken were to plug revenue leaks, which were considered to be a big drain on Markfed's resources. Others were to put into the fast forward mode the process to initiate recoveries of arrears from the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
Cooperation Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa claimed a lot of money was also locked up in Income Tax refunds. "My officials made all-out efforts to get the refunds released. This made a big difference to our fortunes. Then, there were things lying in our godowns which were of no use. In official parlance these are called 'unserviceable' stock articles. We decided to sell them off. The revenue thus collected helped us clear a big part of our debt.
"All these factors meant that in just three years, our debts decreased to Rs 460.31 crore," said the minister.
Series of steps
- Initiatives were taken to plug revenue leaks, which were a big drain on Markfed's resources
- Recovery of arrears from FCI was put into fast forward mode
- Unserviceable stock articles that were gathering dust in godowns were sold off
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/3w5JRNR
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