Enhancing the role of collective economy

The province’s collective economy has developed, affirming its position in upholding the local potentials and advantages regarding land and workforce. It has also played an important role in the shift of agricultural structure, enhancing the efficiency of the local rural economy. The birth of new-style cooperatives have recently contributed to upholding advantages of the local economic economy as well as improving its shortcomings.

Advantages of collective economy upheld

According to statistics by provincial Rural Development Sub-department, the whole province is now home to 1,068 farms with more than 10,698 hectares in total, including 518 on animal husbandry, 542 on cultivation and 8 on general production. Most of them are in Phu Giao, North Tan Uyen, Bau Bang and Dau Tieng districts, generating stable jobs for more than 6,000 rural laborers. Many hi-tech, urban agricultural models have also loomed large across the province, creating a lot of breakthroughs in developing the local farms.

Long Tan milk cow cooperative in Dau Tieng district

After 15 years of getting involved in the field of making mushroom embryos, Nguyen Thi Minh Tan residing in Long Hoa commune’s Long Thi hamlet in Dau Tieng district has developed a large-scale farm specialized in making and supplying various mushroom embryos to Binh Duong and other localities in the Mekong Delta region with the annual income of billions of dong. Her farm has so far generated jobs for 20 local laborers with the average income of between VND4mln and VND8mln per capita per month.

However, the province’s collective economy has faced plenty of difficulties for change. That’s reason why owners of the local farms need to boost coherence in order to bring into full play their advantages and restrict risks from the dark side of the market economy for more sustainable development. Along with this, establishing cooperatives from owners of the local farms is indispensable and objective…

Indispensable development

In the face of requirements for the restructuring of economy, especially agricultural production in association with new-style rural construction amid the country in the period of wide and deep international economic integration, the cooperation to reduce production costs, enhance products’ competitiveness is indispensable and objective, ensuring sustainable economic development for the country in general and Binh Duong in particular.

Realizing the importance of collective economy in the new context under the spirit of the Resolution No.13-NQ/TW of the 5^th plenum of the 9^th Party Central Committee on further improving the efficiency of collective economy, provincial Party Committee promulgated the Action Program No.12-Ctr/TU dated July 22, 2002. Provincial People’s Committee also approved and granted State budget to provincial Cooperative Alliance to make dissemination of information about the 2012 Law on Cooperative, the Government’s Decree No.193/2013/ND-CP detailing some provisions of the Law on Cooperative…while issuing the Decision No.05/2012/QD-UBND regulating some support policies for cooperatives in the province…

Long Tan is a renown commune with milk cow breeding in Dau Tieng district. In August 2013, the Long Tan milk cow cooperative was established with 16 members and total chaptered capital of more than VND9.3bln. The cooperative has to date had a total of 20 members and around 500 milk cows. Its birth has facilitated the local milk cow breeders’ development. Many families in the district’s communes of Thanh Tuyen, Thanh An, An Lap and Long Hoa also learnt about the model in order to develop it.

Le Thanh Son, Permanent Vice-Chairman of provincial Cooperative Alliance said that the development of the province’s collective economy has contributed to promoting the shift of agricultural and rural structure towards the growth of goods production, creating concentrated production areas. Over the past time, the province’s collective economy reached a robust growth, but still faced some shortcomings for change.

The whole province now has a total of 344 cooperative groups with 5,744 members and total capital of VND34.24bln. They have been active in making mutual support, sci-tech application in production, restructuring of plants and animals, raising their members’ income.

There are also 116 cooperatives with 56,544 members and chartered capital of nearly VND640.85bln. Most of them focus on agricultural production, home industry, transport, trade-services, construction…. The annual average profit of each cooperative and each member is estimated at VND360mln and VND60mln, respectively.

Reported by Quynh Nhien-Translated by K.T