Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue emphasized that at the Online Conference reviewing five years of implementing Law on Cooperatives 2012 held on December 6 in Hanoi.
 
Farmers’ income is increasing

Reporting at the conference, the representative of Vietnam Cooperative Alliance (VCA) addressed that up to December 5 there were 20,768 cooperatives nationwide including 6,378 newly established ones, and in 2017 alone 2,468 cooperatives were newly formed. Cooperatives increased in all three economic sectors (industry – construction, agriculture and service), and over 50% of them were agricultural cooperatives. Additionally, 6.2 million were the number of members joining in cooperatives all over the country.
 

Despite many challenges, cooperatives started to operate smoothly and seemed likely to develop. Average revenue in 2016 reached more than 3 billion dong per cooperative increasing 19.8% compared to that in 2013.
 
As his assessment of the development of cooperatives, Secretary of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan stated: “HCMC has summarized and noticed that income of farm households joining cooperatives are 35% higher than that of those are not members of cooperatives”. The higher income didn’t come from productivity improvement since the actual productivity only increased by over 0.7%, it came from the reduction of production cost, high quality products assuring food safety, said Nhan.  
 

Raising no objections to that point, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong added an example of Ha Giang Province. Despite being a poor province with low income, the determination of the Secretary of the provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee to boost collective economy had resulted in the sharp increase in the number of new-type cooperatives, sustainable livelihood and improvement in quality of life for members of cooperatives, he said.
  
New-type agricultural cooperatives have been sticking to its purpose, and even become the core of the production organization and the motivation for improvement in social security, agricultural restructuring, climate change adaptation, building new-type countryside.
 
More preferential policies towards cooperatives are required
 
The Secretary of Lam Dong Provincial Party Committee Le Minh Hoan firmly stated: “The very first thing that farmers need to do is joining cooperatives as the contrast only causes poverty. We are so happy to see that farmers have actually changed, cooperated with experts and enterprises in the value chain. Without cooperatives, there would be no agricultural restructuring and new-type countryside.”
 

Chairman of VCA Nguyen Ngoc Bao stressed that the operation of cooperatives was the element required attention so as to develop cooperatives. He also thought that even though policies of the state were very preferential, they were still unrealistic at times. Furthermore, the implementation of Law on Cooperatives and Law on Enterprises also bumped into many challenges.
 
According to Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong, along with preferential policies, the Goverrnment also needed to enact new specific mechanisms, policies which encouraged cooperatives to form and develop. Likewise, provinces had to give training to leaders of cooperatives.
 
As he was giving directions, Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue demanded ministries, sectors and provinces to measure the efficiency of household economy due to joining cooperatives. At the time, only HCMC could measure it with a very specific number, 35 percent.
 
He addressed: “We haven’t reached the required targets. Therefore, ministries and sectors must continue to study and submit draft amendments to Law on Cooperatives, particularly on capital contribution ratio, compulsory dissolution procedures towards cooperatives that had poor performance, input and output service distribution ratio, etc.”