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Thiruvanathapuram, July 25 The Kerala Government has issued notification for the appointment of a co-operative audit director as part of the efforts to streamline the audit of cooperative institutions in the State.

The Minister for Cooperation, Mr G. Sudhakaran, said in the Assembly on Wednesday that steps had been initiated to appoint a committee to reform the existing Kerala Cooperative Audit Manual.

Besides, an expert panel would be constituted to oversee modernisation of the institutions and computerisation of accounts, he said in reply to questions.

He informed the House that measures had been taken to complete the audit of all the cooperative institutions in the State up to 2005-06. At the same time, audit had been completed up to 2005-06 in the case of coir and handloom cooperative societies.

In reply to another question, the Minister said that as per the estimates as on March 31, 2007, there were 17,772 institutions in the State where audit could be conducted.

Of them, 11,940 institutions were yet to complete audit for 2005-06.

The Minister said that the non-performing assets (NPAs) of the cooperative banks and societies in the State stood at Rs 2,640.56 crore.

Nabard takes the NPAs of the State co-operative bank into account while granting refinance for short-term farm loans.

Since the NPAs of the State Cooperative Bank had gone up in excess of 28 per cent when the present Government assumed office, the quantum of Nabard refinance had come down from 40 per cent to 35 per cent and consequently, there was a shortfall of five per cent in the total short-term farm loans disbursed in the State, Mr Sudhakaran said.

In order to reduce the NPAs, February would be observed as the ‘month of settlement of arrears’ every year.

The objective was to fully clear the arrears of the institutions with 20 per cent of arrears as of now and to bring down the arrears of those with more NPAs to below 20 per cent, the Minister said.

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