Posted on March 7th, 2021 KAMALIKA PIERIS Philip Gunawardene was the creator of the Multipurpose Cooperatives Society. Until 1956, the cooperatives had been single purpose ones. There were separate cooperatives for food distribution, for savings and loan disbursement. There were about 10,500 of cooperatives and they were of 70 different types. Philip decided to weld them into one organization, the Multipurpose Cooperative Society. By 1958 a fair number of Multipurpose Cooperatives were formed, others were converted. There was terrific enthusiasm on the part of the public, said Meegama The village level Multi-purpose Cooperative was a small unit and it would have to depend on the private sector for its stock. Therefore Multipurpose