Measuring efficiency of PriMary Milk cooPerative societies: a case study of south goa Suraj M. Popker*, Guntur Anjan Raju** Abstract This paper endeavours to measure eficiencies of primary dairy milk cooperatives societies using the non-parametric technique of data envelopment analysis and attempt is also made to have the comparative picture as dos audit report correctly relect the eficiency of primary dairy cooperatives societies in audit classiication. The empirical results show that 13 of the 20 primary dairy cooperatives are found to be eficient and, thus, deine the eficient frontier of the primary dairy cooperatives, with the TE scores range from 0.404 to 1, with an average of 0.936. As far as comparative study of eficiency and audit classiication is considered it is found that audit classiication dos not relects the eficiency of primary dairy societies. Keywords Audit Classiication, DEA, Eficiency IntroductIon In India, agriculture still remains the predominant economic activity and luctuations in it have its serious repercussion on the whole of the economy. Over past couple of decades the dairy has made signiicant progress in India. Dairy cooperatives have played a prominent role in the development of dairy industry in India. A huge amount of money has been spent on the creation of infrastructure and provision of facilities for the cooperative dairies. The dairy cooperative has a four level structure, which consists of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), state federations, milk unions, and dairy cooperative societies operating at the national level, state level, district level, and village level, respectively. The milk unions of dairy cooperative societies control primary dairy cooperatives societies, and these primary dairy cooperatives societies are the focus of this study. The Operation Flood programme has converted us from milk deicient to milk surplus country. The per capital availability of milk has increased from about 112 grams per day in 1968-69 to 252 grams per day in 2007-08. The major credit for this achievement goes to cooperative dairy societies. The annual value of India’s milk production is estimated to be Rs.1, 430 billion in 2008-09. In Goa, before liberation cooperative movement was virtually absent in Goa. After liberation as Union Territory of India, Goa had adopted Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act, in 1962 and subsequently ofice of the Registrar of Cooperative Societies was created. Since then there has been signiicant growth cooperative societies in state. In Goa, there are 2, 244 Cooperatives societies with the 8, 11,495 members of which only 163 are Dairy societies with the membership of 19,895. This clearly indicates that, out of total societies 2.45% societies are dairy cooperatives with 7.26% of membership is membership of dairy cooperatives in total membership of cooperatives. In Goa, cooperative milk societies were established in 1964, but its success story started only after 1982, when Goa Dairy followed “Anand Dairy” patten to overcome the earlier drawbacks in its functioning. LIterature revIew Dairying forms an important subsidiary occupation in agriculture, which has the largest employment potential. So it is necessary to study the eficiency and economics of dairy societies and farming and the dairy development. Many studies have been conducted by different researcher on dairy cooperatives and dairy development. A detailed review of some of the important previous studies have been made and presented as under. Dagistan, Koc, et al. (2009), studied, “Identifying Technical Eficiency of Dairy Cattle Management in rural area through a Non-Parametric Method: A case study for the east Mediterranean in Turkey”. The main objective of their study was to identifying technical eficiency of dairy cattle management, supported by project of World Bank in rural areas. Data Envelopment Analysis technique was employed to determine Technical Eficiency. Study reveals that out of 100, only 15 farms were technically eficient in term of input usage. Study also inds that other factors also affect the technical eficiency such as beneit/cost ratio, number of animal, agricultural revenuer * Assistant Professor of Commerce, C.E.S College of Arts and Commerce Cuncolim Salcete Goa, India. E-mail: surajpopker72@rediffmail.com ** Head of Department, Department of Commerce, Goa University, Goa, India. E-mail: rajuanjana@rediffmil.com Article can be accessed online at http://www.publishingindia.com