SEMINAR ON COOPERATIVES A BETTER BUSINESS MODEL:EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES

International Cooperative Alliance - Asia Pacific, the highest cooperative body at Asia Pacific region in collaboration with IFFCO organized a seminar on “COOPERATIVES - A BETTER BUSINESS MODEL –EMERGING TRENDS” from October 23 -24, 2009. The Chief Guest, Mr Shil Kwan Lee, Regional Director, ICA Asia Pacific on this occasion said the cooperatives have by and large remained unaffected by the global economic crisis, which otherwise has severely affected the investor owned corporate structures. He further said that AMUL, IFFCO, NCCF, Cooperative Banks and state level cooperatives have continued to achieve high level of business turnover and profits. The cooperative business model being members owned, member controlled and service oriented in nature certainly deserved to be a preferred form of economic models in the context of moral crisis of capitalism. He informed the delegates from five countries about the decision of UN to declare year 2012 as year for cooperatives.

Dr.G.N.Saxena, The Chairman of Research Committee of the ICA Asia Pacific and Director, IFFCO urged the cooperative fraternity to give priority to cooperative research and studies in the region, so that the cooperatives could add on to their strength and become more competitive in the era of globalization. ICA Research Committee will look into the problem areas, issues and suggest feasible solutions to overcome these challenges.

Mr. JNL Srivastava, Ex Secretary, Agriculture, Govt. of India delivered his key note speech on the theme of the seminar and dwelled upon the values that cooperatives adhere to in terms of developing human capital that remains one of the biggest challenge before societies at large.

Mr.Rajiv I.D. Mehta, Dy. Regional Director, ICA, Asia Pacific presented the recommendations of eight Ministers’ Conferences on Cooperative Policy & Legislation and laid emphasis on the need of an enabling policy environment to make cooperative legislation more effective, clear, simple and crisp.

The deliberations at the seminar resulted in following strategic aspects:

• Cooperatives need to showcase their strength by sharing success stories of successful cooperatives to gain confidence of the stakeholders and policy makers.
• ICA and National Cooperative Federations should institute an Award for the best ten research papers on cooperatives in different sectors.
• Community Media to be more pronounced and directional.
• Cooperatives need to communicate more effectively with the primary members by using latest communication modes like SMS, voice messages for illiterate and visually impaired.
• The students in school and colleges must be given hands on experience on cooperatives as it would help build the social capital of the country.
• The meeting of the Research Committee should be held every year to learn from the research studies.