LAHORE, Dec 11: Around 40 per cent cooperative societies have been found to be bogus in 13 districts of the province.

This was stated by Punjab Minister for Cooperatives Malik Anwer on Thursday. He was briefing newsmen about the one-year performance of his department here.

“Bogus is a generic word for the societies that are either one-man show, non-functional or totally fake,” the minister said.

A province-wide survey would be completed by June next year which would depict a clear picture of the cooperatives societies.

He said that the previous surveys had put percentage of bogus societies at much higher rate. “Those were sample surveys whereas the present one is more detailed and will present the close-to-reality picture.”

The minister said that his department had sent corruption cases against three housing societies to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

At present, the department was concentrating on housing societies, largely because other departments and institutions were not developing as much housing schemes as required. The department would develop a legal framework to pre-empt the possibility of corruption in these schemes before their launching.

The minister said that six cooperative stores had been revamped and their turnover had increased by 40 per cent during the last one year. The stores were in a loss of Rs1.1 million but have earned Rs400,000 this year.

For the Cooperative Bank, the minister said it has diversified into micro-financing and individual loaning. It would also start Kissan Cards on the pattern of other credit cards. The data of the card would include details of land and credit limit. The scheme would start next year.

The bank had also brought down mark up rate from 14 per cent to 9 per cent and was striving hard to cut it down further. It could have succeeded had it not been for over-staffing of the bank.

All 161 branches of the cooperative bank had also started collection of utility bills for facilitating common man, the minister said.