HCM City (VNA) - Amemorandum of understanding was signed on November 6 to form the Network ofAgricultural Cooperative Development Partners (NETCOOP) to promote thedevelopment of agricultural cooperatives, sustainable economic growth and theprosperity of the agricultural sector in Vietnam.

The main partners in NETCOOP are theMinistry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Planning andInvestment, the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance (VCA), the School of Managementfor Agriculture and Rural Development, the Department of Co-operative Economicsand Rural Development, the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture andRural Development, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the GermanAgency for Development Co-operation (GIZ) and Canadian Cooperation Society forInternational Development (Socodevi), together with many other Vietnamese andinternational organsiations.

The MoU was signed at a seminar on agriculturalcooperative development in Ho Chi Minh City on November 6.

Dang Van Thanh, vice director of theCooperative Development Department under the Ministry of Planning andInvestment, said Vietnam’s legal framework for cooperative development had helpedincrease the number of cooperatives and their improvement in scale, technologyand markets.

As of the end of last year, thecountry had 19,569 cooperatives with more than 6.25 million members. Of these,10,726 were agricultural cooperatives.

But agricultural cooperatives arefacing difficulties, including a shortage of capital, lack of consultancy fromstaff and post-harvest preservation systems, and weak linkages among farmers,cooperatives and enterprises.

There was also limited managementcapacity among cooperatives’ leaders, according to Thanh.

Most of the cooperatives supplyinputs to household farmers’ production, and only 12 percent of cooperativeswere active in processing and consumption of farm produce. Meanwhile, manyoperate moderately, which has not brought about practical benefits for members.Some are on the verge of dissolution.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture andRural Development Tran Thanh Nam said agricultural cooperatives needed to learnfrom local and international experience to enable them to improve theirperformance and build new cooperative models to serve their members better andhelp them face challenges in the market.

Vietnamese and internationalorganisations have had good cooperation in developing agricultural cooperatives,he said.

Jong-Ha Bae, representative of the FAOin Vietnam, said: “Vietnam’s agriculture has demonstrated remarkable growth interms of production in the last three decades, but farmers’ income is stilllow. So right now, we should focus more on how to improve farmers’ livelihood.”

Cooperatives provide an opportunityfor small-scale farmers to improve their productivity, add value to theirproduce, and increase their access to national and international markets, Baesaid.

Vietnam targets having 20,000agricultural cooperatives by 2020, of which 15,000 operate efficiently. About50-60 percent of farmer households are members of agricultural co-operatives,with at least 1,000 safe agricultural product chains by then.-VNA