At a forum in theMekong Delta province of An Giang , Nhan said connecting farmerswith businesses or cooperatives is imperative in selling their farmproduce at supermarkets or shipping it abroad.
Since companies pose a higher risk of manipulation, it is better forfarmers to partner with cooperatives to help them secure buyers ofproduct quality and origin and mitigate the recurrent situation ofproduct price plunges in instances of bumper harvests, he said.
Forum participants said new-style cooperatives must be part of a chainincluding businesses. They urged concrete regulations and strictsupervision over the implementation of support policies, especiallythose relating to credit and land use for cooperatives.
They underlined that the biggest problem facing cooperatives isensuring the purchase of farm produce, since farmers have yet to gainmuch profit from selling their products.
Huynh VanThon, Chairman of the Executive Board of the An Giang Plant ProtectionJoint Stock Company, said new-style cooperatives only exist on the basisof close coordination between enterprises and cooperative members.
By the end of 2014, An Giang had two cooperative unions and 147cooperatives with a total chartered capital of more than 412 billion VND(19.6 million USD), Vice Chairman of the An Giang People’s Committee LeVan Nung reported, adding that they had 160,576 members.
About 67.4 percent of the cooperatives operate in the agricultural andfisheries sectors, 16.3 percent in credit, 12.9 percent in transport,and 3.4 percent in small-scale industries. They generated a revenue of837.2 billion VND (39.86 million USD) and a net profit of 92.5 billionVND (4.4 million USD) in 2014, he added.-VNA