Kathmandu. Madhes Province has allocated a budget for the coming fiscal year 2083/84 and has pledged to be strict on cooperative regulation and financial governance.

Finance Minister Yubaraj Bhattarai has allocated the budget for the coming fiscal year

in the provincial assembly today.

It states that a zero-tolerance policy will be adopted to completely control the tendency of embezzlement.

The bill states that the legal and structural provisions would be strictly enforced to return the money to the savers by immediately freezing and confiscating the property of the directors and office bearers of the cooperatives who have misappropriated the earnings earned by the sweat of the citizens.

In order to ensure financial governance, accountability and transparency of cooperatives, all cooperatives within the province will be compulsorily linked to the ‘Integrated Provincial Digital Regulation and Monitoring System’.

It is stated that a mechanism will be developed to control the cooperatives before a possible crisis occurs by monitoring their credit flow, liquidity position and financial risk in real time through this system.

Cooperatives will be completely discouraged from investing in unproductive sectors, shares and real estate transactions and it will be made mandatory to mobilize capital only in agriculture, entrepreneurship and productive sectors.

It states that the federal government will coordinate and collaborate with the Cooperative Regulatory Authority to make the management of problematic cooperatives and the regulation of the overall cooperative sector more effective.