HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Local cooperatives needto mobilise capital from their members or cooperate with enterprise members toimprove their production and trading, the HCM City Cooperative Alliance hassaid.

Speaking at a seminar on developing the collectiveeconomic model in agriculture in Ho Chi Minh City this week, Bui Tran Huy Vinhof the HCM City Cooperative Alliance, said: “The Capital Aid Fund forCooperative Members of HCM City (CCM Fund) provided loans worth 1.52 trillionVND (65.4 million USD) to 60,849 applicants last year and 332.3 billion VND (14.2million USD) to 11,510 applicants in the first half of this year.

“The money has helped cooperatives and their members,thereby contributing to economic development and building rural areas andreducing usury.”

"But many cooperatives are unable to borrow frombanks or the CCM Fund since they lack assets to mortgage or feasible businessplans," he said.

Nguyen Van Luong of the HCM City Farmers Associationsaid in addition to the difficulty in getting loans on easy terms, cooperativesand co-operative groups also faced other difficulties such as low productivity,lack of steady outlets for their products and lack of qualified humanresources.

Vinh said cooperatives needed to be more active inraising capital from members.

“Cooperatives themselves need to make the effort andshould not depend on the Government‘s support.”

A representative of the city’s Department ofAgriculture and Rural Development said agro-forestry and fisheriesproduction was worth 21.4 trillion VND (926.15 million USD) last year, ayear-on-year increase of 6.2 percent.

To enable the collective agricultural sector todevelop more efficiently, the department had proposed many measures, includingproviding loans for hi-tech agriculture, organising trade promotion activitiesto boost consumption of cooperatives’ products and organising programmes toenhance transfer of farming and animal breeding technologies and models thatcan adapt to climate change and saltwater intrusion, he said.

The city sought to achieve rural per capita income of 100million VND by 2025 and ensure 20 percent of the population joins cooperativescompared to 11.9 percent now, he said.

"The collective economic sector, especially cooperatives,plays an important role in achieving the targets," he said.

Nguyen Thi Bach Mai, Chairwoman of the HCM CityFarmers Association, said the association had drafted a plan on “One District,One Cooperative model on hi-tech agricultural material supply, and hi-techagricultural production and consumption in 2019-2023” to enable restructure ofthe agricultural sector.

The city has 85 cooperatives and one union ofcooperative in the agricultural sector, with most of them growing vegetables,orchids or mushroom or raising dairy cattle, pigs, crocodiles, shrimp, or fish.

Cooperatives have gradually established their brandsand their product quality has steadily improved, enough to be sold by largesupermarket chains such as Co.opmart, Big C, Aeon, and VinMart.

At the seminar, the association signed agreements withretailers, including Saigon Co.op and VinMart, to sell products.-VNS/VNA