PACS constitute the lowest tier of the short-term cooperative credit structure in the country at panchayat/ village level.
They serve as a crucial link in sustaining the rural economy of the country by providing short-term and medium-term credit and other input facilities such as fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, etc. to farmers.
There are nearly 95,000 PACS in the country, with a member base of around 13 crores.
These are refinanced by NABARD through 351 District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) and 34 State Cooperative Banks (StCBs).
The StCBs and DCCBs together provide nearly ₹ 5 lakh crore rural credit annually, out of which ₹ 1.3 lakh crore is refinanced by NABARD.
A project for Computerization of 63,000 functional PACS in three years with a total financial outlay of ₹ 2,516 Crore has been approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs vide its decision dated 29th June, 2022.
This project entails bringing all the functional PACS onto an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) based common software, linking them with NABARD through StCBs and DCCBs.
Exercise Kazind – 2022
The 6th Edition of Indo – Kazakhstan joint training exercise “KAZIND-22” is scheduled to be conducted at Umroi (Meghalaya) from 15 to 28 December 2022.
“Exercise KAZIND” will enhance the level of defence cooperation between Indian Army and Kazakhstan Army which will further foster the bilateral relations between the two nations.
Joint annual training exercise with the Kazakhstan Army was instituted in 2016 as Exercise Prabal Dostyk, which was later upgraded to a company level exercise and renamed as Ex Kazind in 2018.
Kazakhstan Army soldiers comprising of troops from the Regional Command, South and Indian Army soldiers from the 11 Gorkha Rifles will be participating in the exercise.
Aim of the exercise is to build positive military relations, imbibe each other’s best practices and promote the ability to operate together while undertaking counter terrorist operations in semi urban / jungle scenario, under a UN peace enforcement mandate.
This joint exercise will enable the two armies to train, plan and execute a series of combined tactical drills for neutralising of likely threats that may be encountered in UN peace keeping operations.
The scope of this exercise involves a Command Post Exercise (CPX) at the Battalion level and Company level Field Training Exercise (FTX) on sub-conventional operations.
During the exercise, participants will engage in variety of missions ranging from joint planning, joint tactical drills, basics of special arms skills, HADR and raiding a hostile target.