President Ramchandra Poudel has certified the ordinance brought for the purpose of regulating the cooperatives and returning the sunk money of the savers. President Paudel issued the ordinance with approval on Sunday. With this, the way is now open for the government to implement the ordinance.

The government decided to amend some laws related to cooperatives through an ordinance last Tuesday. According to this, the decision to amend the Cooperatives Act, 2074, the National Bank Act, 2058 and the Deposit and Credit Protection Fund Act, 2073 was taken by the Cabinet meeting. The same ordinance was issued by the President.

Ordinance has special provision for refund of savings. Regardless of what is written elsewhere in the prevailing law, the ordinance provides that the savings of up to five lakh rupees accumulated by members of cooperative societies or cooperative societies which have been declared problematic under section 104 shall be paid on first priority.

In the case of saving more than five lakh rupees accumulated by the member, the concerned organization should make a standard and make arrangements to pay the member's saving amount proportionately if there is no situation to pay it at once. For the purpose of returning the savings, a provision has also been made in the ordinance that the cooperative organization or the management committee according to section 105 of the Cooperative Act can sell the mortgage security taken while providing the property or loan of such organization. 

However, seven months have passed since the government announced to return the amount (up to five lakhs) of the small savers of the troubled cooperatives, even the data has not been collected. Although the government has introduced a policy to refund the money of small savers, there is still confusion as to who will get the money back due to the lack of accurate data. 

The government had announced on May 15, through the budget of the current financial year, that the amount of savings of up to five lakh rupees in savings and credit cooperatives would be returned. The government introduced a savings return program saying that small savers with weak economic conditions were greatly distressed when problems arose in cooperatives.

"Provisions will be made to refund the money of savers up to 5 lakh rupees in the name of owners of troubled cooperatives and family members of single houses," said the budget statement. According to the budget announcement, not a single person has got the savings back. But there is no definite number and details of savers in cooperatives with any government agency. 

The government started collecting the details of members who save up to five lakh rupees of problem-oriented organizations in August. For this, a letter was sent to all provinces and local levels to send the data as soon as possible.

The letter was sent directly to the cooperatives within the scope of the Department of Cooperatives, to the organizations under the regulation of the provinces through the Prime Minister's Office and to the organizations under the regulation of the local level through the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration. In the

letter, the details of the members who had saved up to Rs 5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh were requested in the cooperative which has problems and the savers have not received the money back even after asking for it. But the complete details have not been received yet, said Pitambar Ghimire, registrar of the cooperative department. "Complete details have not come from any state or local level," he said. But we only asked for the details of the savers of the problem-oriented organizations.

Ghimire informed that after the details were not received according to the initial letter, the cooperative department is sending a team with experts to three provinces to collect the data. "In the state and local level, there is no work to update the details of the cooperative organization and keep records," he added.

In recent months, external indicators of the economy, including foreign exchange reserves, current account balances, and remittance flows, have been steadily strengthening. Excess liquidity has accumulated in the financial system. Interest rates have dropped to single digits. Even though the interest rate has come down, there is no demand for loans.

The main reason for the economy not being viable is the lack of market demand. Economists say that when there are problems in the cooperative and microfinance sectors, the economy does not become viable.

Former finance ministers have said that the problem of the cooperative sector should be solved immediately to make the economy viable and for that, the government should refund the money of small savers in the initial stage. This is the reason, they say, in the budget of the current financial year, there is a program to return the savings of savers up to five lakh rupees.

Former Finance Minister Barshman Pun, who read the budget statement of the current financial year, said that the money of small savers can be returned by discussing with the National Bank, Land Management, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Cooperative Department and other agencies. He said that the main reason why the economy is not functioning now is the problem of the cooperative sector, so the government should refund the money of small savers to solve it.

'Property of cooperative organizations and managers who are in trouble, the amount of savers up to five lakhs can be returned by selling the shares bought by them,' he said, 'It has been reported that the manager has kept a lot of property in the name of his close relatives. If it is not enough, their property can be sold. He also said that this work is possible if the government wants.

Mentioning that cooperatives and microfinance have made a great contribution to running the lowest level of the economy, former finance minister Pun said, 'Nowadays, there are problems in both these sectors, and small and microeconomic activities at the lower level of the economy have been badly affected. Due to the problems in the region, everything including small enterprises, savings, investment and consumption have been affected in the economy. This has disrupted the entire economic system.'' told. 

Former finance minister Prakasharan Mahat also says that the government should take initiatives to return the money of financially weak citizens, whose money is sunk in cooperatives. For this reason, he explained that the government has made a policy of returning the money of the cooperative savers of up to 5 lakhs and selling the property of the cooperative organizations and directors to collect that amount.

'How much progress has been made in this matter mentioned in the budget,' he said, 'the government should start collecting the data and how much money can be recovered by the co-operative operators.' Former Finance Minister Mahat says that even if the amount is to be paid from their property or assets, it is not immediately possible, so the government should pay the amount of the small savers who are now in extreme trouble.

Similarly, through a new ordinance, the government is going to repeal the National Cooperative Development Board Act, 2049. The Ordinance provides that the assets, liabilities and employees of the National Cooperative Development Board, including movable and immovable assets, will be automatically transferred to the Authority. In the

ordinance, provision has been made to establish a powerful National Cooperative Regulatory Authority to regulate savings and loan cooperatives. The Ordinance also provides for settlement of other criminal, asset laundering and organized crime cases pending in the court, registration and classification of cooperatives, limits on personal savings and loans, membership in credit information center, establishment of cooperative credit and protection fund, etc.

Koshi up to five lakh savers and eight hundred and fifty lakhs 

The number of savers who save up to five lakh rupees in cooperatives in Koshi province is 822 thousand 311. Those savers have saved a total of 33 billion 11 million 644 thousand 997 rupees, according to the Department of Cooperatives. According to the Department of Cooperatives, the number of those savers who have saved up to three lakh rupees is 884,439.