The Vietnamese working delegation poses for a photo with representatives of JA Zennoh agricultural cooperative in Ibaraki province, Japan. (Photo: VNA) Tokyo (VNA) – President of the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance (VCA) Nguyen Ngoc Bao has asked Japan to help Vietnam develop multi-service cooperatives which have proved successful in Japan.
Bao was on a working trip to Japan from November 4-10 during which he explored the Japanese model of multi-service cooperative.
Over the past seven decades, cooperatives in Japan have expanded on a large scale. They have been operated based on the multi-service approach and competed fairly with each other following the market mechanism.
They are non-profit organisations which cover a wide range of areas, from production, services, distribution to provision of financial services, such as credit and insurance services, to their members.
Bao visited a purchasing and processing facility of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Association (ZEN-NOH) in Ibaraki which has distributed 30 percent of the prefecture’s agricultural products to the market. The ZEN-NOH is a member of the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) Group.
The facility purchases farm produce from local farmers to supply to the market daily.
He said Japan’s cooperatives are effective because they adopt their own regulations and are managed under the market mechanism with little support from the government. The model is applicable in Vietnam, he noted.
Bao added that the VCA has asked the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the ZEN-NOH to send experts to share experience with Vietnamese agricultural cooperatives in accelerating reforms and operating under market mechanism.
Japan currently has over 600 agricultural cooperatives with more than 8.6 million farmer households./.
VNA
