1 TRANSLATION OF THE PROCEEDINGS AND ... - APFA News

treasurer. Board meetings are required to be held monthly and the Act has
provisions covering the quorum required for these meetings, the formation of
committees for finance and audit as well as termination of membership. The
Act covers the financial management of cooperatives including the deviation of
capital, receipt of donations and assistance as well as its accounting.
The Minister also informed the Assembly that the Act also includes provisions
for the merger of two or more cooperatives as well as dissolution in case of
unfavourable conditions. The view and efforts of the government to develop
and promote cooperatives were also reported to the Assembly.
The Minister highlighted the changes made in 3 pages of the draft Act circulated
last year and explained that this was in order to make the Act easier for the
people to understand. It was pointed out that the copy circulated last year did
not have a preamble which has been added in the present copy as per the
proposal of the Assembly. The preamble says that the Cooperatives Act is “An
act to provide legal framework for the formation of Co-operatives, in order to
facilitate economic development”. Further, some corrections have been made to
make the terms clearer. These corrections include amongst others, primary
cooperatives to be understood as preliminary cooperatives; similarly the ‘Values
and principles of co-operatives’ has been changed to “Values and provisions of
co-operatives”; and Union of Cooperatives has been changed to Central
Cooperatives.
During the consideration of the Act, page by page by the Assembly and in the
subsequent discussions, the Samtse Dzongda and the Punakha Chimi proposed
amendments to the terminology which were accepted by the Assembly.
In Article 1 on the first page the year was charged to Female Iron Snake Year
and year 2001.
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