Proposing 12 contents and 6 solutions to amend the Law on Cooperatives 2012

Attending and chairing the conference from the Hanoi bridge point were comrade Do Van Chien - Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front; Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Bao - Chairman of the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance, Deputy Head of the Steering Committee for the innovation of cooperative collective economy. Also attending were representatives of relevant ministries, branches and bridge points of 63 provinces and cities.

Chairing the conference from Nghe An bridge was comrade Hoang Nghia Hieu - Member of the Provincial Party Committee, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee. Also attending were representatives of relevant departments and branches.

CONTINUE TO INNOVATE AND DEVELOP THE COLLECTIVE ECONOMY

Overview of the Conference summarizing 20 years of implementing Resolution No. 13-NQ/TW, 9th term, on collective economic innovation from Nghe An bridge. Photo: Nguyen Hai

Implementing Resolution No. 13/NQ-TW of the 9th Party Central Committee dated March 18, 2002 on innovation and developmentcollective economyOver the past 20 years, with leadership and direction solutions, the State has issued a number of mechanisms and policies to support the development of the collective economy.

Specifically, along with implementing training courses to change awareness about collective economic development in the non-agricultural sector, institutions on collective economic development andcooperatives(Cooperatives) are increasingly improving; gradually supporting cooperatives in implementingtrade promotion,market expansion; support policies for new establishment and conversion of operations according to the Law on Cooperatives.

Participating in trade promotion or building products according to OCOP standards is a solution for craft village products of non-agricultural cooperatives to access large markets. Photo courtesy of Nghe An Newspaper

From 2002 to 2021, the whole country had 20,234 non-agricultural cooperatives established, an average of 1,012 cooperatives established/year; under the impact of Resolution 13, the structure of cooperatives changed in a positive direction, some cooperatives were midwives forOCOP products; newly established 21 cooperative unions, simultaneously dissolved 7 cooperative unions; newly established 33,307 cooperative groups; by the end of 2021, the cooperative sector and non-agricultural cooperative groups attracted nearly 3 million members; most cooperatives operating under the 2003 Law on Cooperatives have been converted under the 2012 Law. By the end of 2021, excluding people's credit funds, the average charter capital of each cooperative was 2.88 billion VND/cooperative, 1.6 times higher than in 2011 and 8.2 times higher than in 2002, 1.4 times higher than that of agricultural cooperatives.

Representatives of the provincial Fatherland Front and departments and branches followed the event from Nghe An bridge. Photo: Nguyen Hai

In addition to the above positive results, based on the assessment and reports of representatives of ministries and branches, the Steering Committee for Collective Economic Innovation also boldly pointed out a number of shortcomings and limitations. These are that the State's support policies for cooperatives are issued in large numbers but are still scattered, spread out, and lacking in synchronization and specificity; the number of trained and fostered cooperative staff and members is still low compared to the demand; the number of cooperatives, members and employees participating in social insurance is still low and unstable; the proportion of cooperatives accessing policies applying advanced and high technology is still low; participation in national trade promotion programs is still limited; the number, structure and quality of cooperative management staff are still lacking, weak and inadequate.

AMENDMENT AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE LAW ON COOPERATIVES

Establishing new-model non-agricultural cooperatives and strengthening capital support mechanisms and channels are solutions for non-agricultural cooperatives to develop and reach new heights. In the photo: Workers of the Orange Cooperative in Con Cuong district take care of the orange garden.

However, after 10 years of implementation, the Law on Cooperatives has encountered shortcomings and limitations. These are that the documents guiding the implementation mechanism of the Law are still slow and not specific; some provisions of the Law on Cooperatives still overlap with other provisions and hinder the development of cooperatives, especially the provisions on legal status for cooperatives to access credit sources; policies mainly focus on supporting and giving incentives to cooperatives and cooperative unions in the agricultural sector while there are very few non-agricultural cooperatives; the cooperative alliance system still lacks resources, the State management apparatus for collective economy and non-agricultural cooperatives is still scattered and not concentrated; the scale of non-agricultural cooperatives is still small and the number of members tends to decrease.

Representatives of Nghe An Cooperative Union participated in a trade promotion fair introducing goods organized by the Department of Industry and Trade of 6 North Central provinces. Photo: Document

In Nghe An, after 20 years of implementing Resolution 13/NQ-TW and 10 years of implementing the Law on Cooperatives in 2012, the whole province has 3,016 cooperatives, of which 252 are newly established, with an average revenue of 2.056 billion VND; there are 974 non-agricultural cooperatives, 34 products of agricultural cooperatives meeting OCOP standards of 3 stars or higher; 2 newly established Cooperative Unions.

(Source: Nghe An Cooperative Alliance)

Speaking at the conference, Comrade Do Van Chien - Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front highly appreciated the significance of this conference and will continue to organize seminars to evaluate the operating model of agricultural cooperatives. Agreeing with and acknowledging the opinions and presentations of ministries and branches on the innovation of collective economy and cooperatives, in the coming time, to continue institutionalizing the Party's viewpoints and guidelines on continuing to innovate and develop collective economy and cooperatives in our country, we will focus on amending and supplementing the 2012 Law on Cooperatives and consider it a breakthrough solution to overcome the above limitations and shortcomings. According to the draft presented by the Cooperative Alliance, there are 12 contents proposed to amend the Law and 6 solutions to improve the effectiveness of the implementation of the Law on Cooperatives./.