I indeed deem it an honour and a privilege to be addressing today this very august and distinguished audience on issues, concerns and challenges that the rural cooperative credit structure faces at its current stage of evolution.
As you may perhaps be aware, the United Nations has declared the year 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives and, to my mind, this is precisely what makes today’s Central Zone Cooperative Conference, both contextually and topically, very relevant and it will culminate, I am sure, in most desired outcomes going forward !