Collective Economic Development: Motivation for New Countryside Construction

The first achievement in collective economic development is the significant increase in cooperatives. The province now has 190 cooperatives, including 125 agricultural cooperatives and 65 non-agricultural cooperatives. Agricultural cooperatives have initially expanded their basic services for agricultural production. General agricultural cooperatives tend to increase and operate more efficiently. The cohesion and connectivity between cooperatives with input suppliers and output buyers is strengthened. With more effective operations, cooperatives have become a channel for mobilising resources for trade development, restructuring the economy towards industrialisation and modernisation, expanding production scales, increasing incomes for farmers, and creating momentum for new rural construction.

 

From the results obtained, to continue enforcing Resolution 5 of the Central Party Committee and the Action Programme of the Hau Giang Provincial Party Committee, Hau Giang province has launched a cooperative operation quality project in the 2014-2016 period, with a vision to 2020. The project has a total budget of VND19.654 billion, of which VND6.904 billion is from integrated funds, VND9.31 billion is from local budget sources, and VND3.44 billion is from cooperatives.

 

The specific objectives of the project are to attract more than 2.5 percent of farming households to join agricultural cooperatives by 2016 and 7.5 percent by 2020. Good-performing cooperatives will reach 70 percent, while poor-performing cooperatives will be reduced to below 10 percent by 2016. And, more than 80 percent of cooperatives will be ranked good and excellent by 2020. Each district, town or city will have at least one typically advanced cooperative model for other localities in the province to follow by 2016 and to have at least five models by 2020. Up to 10 - 15 percent of fruit and vegetable areas of cooperative members will apply VietGAP processes by 2016 and over 30 percent area by 2020. Two cooperatives will have collective brands by 2016 and most cooperatives in specialised farming region will have collective brands.

 

Tran Cong Chanh, Chairman of Hau Giang Provincial People's Committee, said when this project will assert the important role and position of collective economy as it helps generate jobs, increase incomes, improve material and spiritual life of cooperative members, reduce poverty sustainably and contribute to local economic growth.

 

He said this project will fund expertise and technique training and retraining for cooperative administrators and members. Capable cooperatives will be funded to join trade fairs, build collective brands, print brochures and advertise products. Cooperatives with new investment projects to expand their production and business capacity, particularly in agricultural field, will receive preferential loans and credit guarantee from the Cooperative Development Assistance Fund, and be given priority to borrow money from banks and credit institutions according to the laws. The Hau Giang Provincial People's Committee will increase the capital for Cooperative Development Assistance Fund to VND10 billion in 2016, and it will be based on actual demand to balance the assistance capital for this fund in the following years.

 

In addition to the above policies, the province also has many support policies and incentives for agricultural cooperatives, such as infrastructure development investment, working office construction, pump purchase and land preferences.