Politburo member, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front - Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan, Head of the Central Economic Committee -  Mr. Vuong Dinh Hue, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Viet Nam – Mr. Cao Duc Phat, Chairman of Viet Nam Farmers’ Union – Mr. Nguyen Quoc Cuong and Vice Chairman of Viet Nam Cooperative Alliance – Mr. Nguyen Dac Thang chaired the seminar.
Currently, there are 10.399 agricultural cooperatives with a total of 6.7 million members in Viet Nam. The average of annually established cooperatives is 200, about 20% of cooperatives participated in restructuring under Cooperative Law 2012 to build a better structure, based on its mission.
However, to carry out these missions, agricultural cooperatives have to overcome many difficulties such as: finance, physical facilities, poor technique, backwardness. Besides, many cooperatives have not implemented restructuring and operation under the Cooperative Law.
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thien Nhan said that as a scientist, he believed, with new cooperative types,Vietnam agriculture can switch to a new phase because it will overcome the weakness and obstruction of last 30 years.
New cooperative types will creat a double strong motivation, thereby making a breakthrough in developing agriculture. Farmers are owners in agricultural activities while still receive support from cooperatives to enhance competitiveness, receive maximum support from the State, promote strongly business linking and meet the requirements of international trade integration.
New cooperative types also generate an interaction of 4 types of benefits: benefits of more than 10 million farmers, the State, businesses and countries trade with Viet Nam.
According to Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan, from now until the end of August, related Ministries and Departments, Farmers’ Union and Cooperative Alliance should coordinate in propaganding to introduce effective cooperative models to equip the most common knowledge about cooperatives. So when they conduct Party Congress, these issues will be deeper awared.
Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan offer on the basis of the above discussion, Central Economic Committee should promote preparatory steps with focus on problems of agriculture to submit to the Committee Secretariat for promulgating a Resolution. If there is a resolution or a conclusion of Committee Secretariat, we will deploy it across the country, localities supplement this content in the political documents before organizing their Party Congresses.
About finance for cooperatives, Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan said that in current condition we need to clarify and propose to Ministry of Finance for providing funding and also reviewing all the additional documents, in next 2 – 3 years maintaining funding resource for strengthening new cooperatives and renovating old cooperatives.
Discussing plan to build new cooperative type from now until the end of 2015, Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan stressed that we need to work with committees, authorities to know any locality where want to build new cooperative types first.
On that basis, we will make a plan about quantity and where to build new cooperative type and each cooperative need a agricultural engineer who knows technology and general theory of cooperatives.