Russia’s Prime Minister has shown his support for rural co-operators across the country.
As farmers, co-operative organisations and unionists gathered for the first ever Pan-Russian Congress of Rural Co-operatives, a letter read out from Dmitry Medvedev said he highly appreciated the role of rural co-operatives and was confident the Congress would open new opportunities for development of the Russian co-operative movement.
His representative, head of the Agriculture Ministry Nikolay Fedorov, said co-operation represented a powerful "third force" in Russia, together with the state and private enterprise. “Co-operation is the major economic, social and political institute without which modernisation of economy and society is impossible, and particularly rural economy and rural society,” Mr Fedorov said. “After all, in the rural economy the main role is played by the small and medium businesses which are the base of the co-operative movement.”
In Russia, 18,000 small and medium agricultural organisations, about 280,000 farms and individual entrepreneurs and over two million personal subsidiary farms belong to co-operatives, he said.
The congress in St Petersburg welcomed delegates from all types of co-operatives representing all the Russian regions, including 250 delegates from consumer co-ops. Joining Russian officials, were a number of foreign guests including President of the International Co-operative Alliance Dame Pauline Green, board member of Cooperatives Europe Dirk Lenhoff and Chairman of the board of the Belarusian Republic’s Union of Consumer Societies Sergey Sidko.
Dame Pauline said co-operatives contribute to development and create jobs, as well as socially important products and values. Unfortunately, she added, not all governmental institutions understood their importance. “The world would be a very different place if just a fraction of the public money that went to bail out the big commercial banks across the world was put into co-operative development,” she said. “It’s important to note that in the last few years, the Russian Government has given much consideration to co-operators’ activity, listened to them and realised serious measures of support.”
Evgeny Kuznetsov, Chairman of the Council of the Russian central union of consumer co-ops Centrosojuz, added that consumer co-operation was helping develop agricultural employment and business activity in villages. At the same time, he added, it suffered from a number of problems and threats, and to tackle them higher levels of state support were needed.
False co-operatives, which fail to add benefits but draw off the considerable financial support, were one such challenge. Mr Kuznetsov said they damage the co-operative movement, which in Russia has complex image problems remaining from the Soviet period.
He said the Framework for Development of Rural Co-operation, put together collaboratively by Russian co-operative and governmental authorities, would address some of these issues. Delegates unanimously voted for adoption of the Framework until 2020.
Source: Chief editor of ‘Russian Cooperation’ Yuri Gladkevich
