On April 16, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in coordination with Dak Lak Provincial People's Committee held a conference to review task performance in 2020 and lay out new tasks for 2021 of the Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development in Buon Ma Thuot.
The conference was chaired by Tran Thanh Nam - Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Y Giang Gry Nie Knong - Vice Chairman of Dak Lak Provincial People's Committee, Le Duc Thinh - Director of Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development.

Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam and leaders of Dak Lak province chair the conference.
According to the report at the conference, by the end of March 2021, there were nearly 17,600 cooperatives and 68 cooperative unions operating in the agricultural sector in the country, in which 83% of cooperatives operated effectively, increasing 50% compared to that in 2015. The average turnover of agricultural cooperatives was more than VND 380 million per year. There were 24% of cooperatives implementing chain link, forming nearly 1,500 chain models with more than 2,300 products and more than 3,200 locations selling products in compliance with good production standards.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Tran Thanh Nam speaking at the conference.
However, despite such changes, the scale of revenue and the number of members of the agricultural cooperatives remained small; the mechanization of agriculture was not synchronous; such important policies as the investments in infrastructure improvements, especially the infrastructure improvements in production, business, land policy, and credit remained to be bottlenecks. Some opinions are that the key to cooperatives to develop should be human beings, but the leadership capacity of cooperatives was still limited. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen, support and improve management ability of the board of directors and chairman of the board of directors of the cooperative.
In addition, delegates also said that relevant ministries should continue to review and complete the legal system, mechanisms and policies on collective economic development, agricultural cooperatives (in terms of land, taxes, credit, etc.), and promptly remove difficulties and problems to create conditions for the sustainable development of collective economy and agricultural cooperatives. Especially when the Free Trade Agreements come into effect, the matters of product safety and quality, food security and commodity competition will take place very fiercely. With its advantages and potential, economic cooperation through cooperatives and cooperative groups will contribute to increase product value.
Speaking at the Conference, Mr. Tran Thanh Nam, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, suggested that localities should continue to develop cooperative and cooperative economies towards mechanization of production, integration in the investments in processing technology and should develop agricultural products in the direction of multi-industry and multi-occupation, adapting to the market economy, renewing production and business modes in order to step by step improve goods competitiveness.
“We now have to have a new mindset, developing in the direction of agriculture combined with multi-occupation and with rural services with many agricultural service cooperatives. The second trend is that when the OCOP program is very effective, the agriculture industry also begins to attach to it, so we have to study seriously to promote this program. This is the task for the Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development to coordinate with localities in building a long-term strategy”- Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam emphasized.
Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam emphasized that the task in 2021 is to continue to perfect the system of legal documents in the violation of the sector laws, to promote the synchronous mechanization in agricultural production, to build a rural career development strategy to 2030, to start a project to develop agricultural cooperatives to respond to climate change, and to develop collective economy and cooperatives.
According to Deputy Truong Thanh Nam, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is preparing to issue a circular guiding the functions, powers and tasks of the agricultural sector. Therefore, the local apparatus organization should be structured and arranged properly depending on the situation of each locality.
The Deputy Minister suggested that the local Department of Agriculture and Rural Development should give advice to develop key programs and plans to help and develop agricultural cooperatives.
“I wonder and acknowledge that the current cooperative infrastructure is very weak. Therefore, sectors need to have mechanisms to support the infrastructure development of cooperatives. The ministry has tried to develop cooperative infrastructure for the past time, but has not yet succeeded. We will try our best in the new rural program and experiment with a number of projects”, emphasized Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam.
Concluding the conference, Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam launched the competition for traditional handicraft products 2021. Accordingly, the competition will receive the products from September to October and will then announce the awards at the Craft Village Fair.
| Mr. Mai Trong Dung, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Dak Lak province remarked:In the development of cooperatives, there are a number of difficulties, including difficulties in human resources as the managers of cooperatives still have many limitations. Although the rural sub-department has already had training classes for cooperative members and for cooperative leaders, such classes did not meet the demand. In the near future, we hope to have intensive training classes for the directors of cooperatives so that cooperatives can thoroughly understand the issues of cooperative economic development in order to develop local cooperatives. |
Kim Bao