Abstract:
There is huge investment employed during the last four years by cooperative societies in the Northern Province.
Since the overall performance of them are not at the expected level, there is a need to examine them in terms of
their financial and operational performance of the cooperatives so as to establish their current status in terms of
assets utilization, performance of their business activities and see whether they satisfy the needs of their
stakeholders.
In this study, the researchers adopted multiple methods such as focus group discussion, key informants
interview, and direct observation for primary data collection. The researchers designed tools for collecting data
from different stakeholders of the co-operative societies. The secondary data were collected from the documents
related to all the activities from 2009/2010 to 2012/2013.
Though considerable amounts of resources are available for the cooperatives, it seems that the Board of
Directors and the management do not know how to utilize the resources at their maximum and get benefit from
them. The examination of their business activities indicates that most of the activities are very relevant and
potential to the societies. However, most of the activities are running at losses. This raises questions as to why
those activities are running at a loss. After the civil war, the cooperatives concerned received altogether Rs. 231.56
million as support from the organizations such as
UN agencies, International NGOs, Local NGOs and the Government. However, it was found that the returns out
of these investments are meager and inefficient management is the challenge that has to be addressed immediately
to revive them
