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Department of Cooperatives

department · verified (verified 2026-05-17)

Profile

Head
Md. Ismail Hossain
Role
Registrar and Director General
Annual budget
—
Staff
—
Established
1971
Legal basis
Co-operative Credit Societies Act, 1904 (original enabling legislation under British India); Co-operative Societies Act, 2001 (সমবায় সমিতি আইন, ২০০১; Act No. 47 of 2001, effective 15 July 2001, repealed the Co-operative Societies Ordinance, 1984); amended in 2013; Co-operative Societies Rules, 2004 (gazetted 16 July 2004, repealed the Co-operative Societies Rules, 1987); National Co-operative Policy, 2012

As of May 2026, the Department of Cooperatives oversees 1,74,930 registered societies with ~10 million members and Tk 38,107.81 crore in working capital (Nov 2025 official figures). Md. Ismail Hossain took charge as Registrar and DG on 13 November 2025. The department is digitizing all cooperative services via an Integrated Digital Service Delivery Platform. A structural audit constraint persists: annual audits of societies must be conducted by departmental representatives rather than independent chartered accountancy firms, contributing to audit backlogs across a large and thinly-supervised registry. Milk Vita (345 primary societies, ~40,000 farmer-members, daily procurement 225,000 litres), the flagship cooperative under department oversight, received Tk 13.12 crore in government support and is pursuing infant formula production and expanded dairy infrastructure under Chairman S M Amir Hamza Shatil (since 1 April 2026).

Recent activity

Provenance & notes

established_year set to 1971 (schema minimum 1947): the Department of Cooperatives continued operating in Bangladesh following independence, inheriting the administrative structure established under the Co-operative Credit Societies Act of 1904 (British India) -- the founding legal instrument confirmed by Banglapedia (Co-operative Movement) and Wikipedia; the department formally reconstituted under Bangladesh jurisdiction in 1971-72. Current governing statute is the Co-operative Societies Act, 2001 (amended 2013), confirmed by bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd (Act No. 876) and coops4dev.coop. The 1,74,930 societies figure and Tk 38,107.81 crore working capital are from official government statistics released at the 54th National Cooperative Day on 1 November 2025 per BSS News primary reporting (bssnews.net/news/327157) -- these are the most recent official figures. The ICA/coops4dev figure of 192,020 societies with 11,509,825 members uses reference year 2019-20 and differs; the November 2025 official departmental figures are used as current. Munima Hafiz served as Registrar and DG in Additional Charge at least through 1 November 2025 (National Cooperative Day); Md. Ismail Hossain formally appointed DG on 13 November 2025 per BSS News (others/331716). head_since set to 2025-11-13. Milk Vita: established 1973 (BSS News 327157; Wikipedia states 1974 -- the 1973 date is from official BSS News government source and is used; the discrepancy may reflect registration vs. operational commencement year). Milk Vita operates under Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Co-operatives oversight; the Department of Cooperatives acts as the regulatory and audit body for all cooperative societies including Milk Vita. annual_budget_bdt null: no standalone departmental budget line identified in public budget documents; expenditure falls within the RDCD budget envelope. staff_count null: not publicly disclosed in accessible sources. The structural audit constraint (audits by departmental staff rather than independent CAs) is confirmed by coops4dev.coop and ICNL legal manual as a known governance limitation, consistent with user-specified 'audit backlog' context. Registration backlog noted as a chronic structural issue per academic literature and ICNL Civic Freedom Monitor, exacerbated by the large registry size relative to departmental inspection capacity.

Sources