Overview of the forum on October 26, hosted by the business magazine Genossenschaftsverband.
Speech at the Forum “Promoting Regional Connections – Accelerating Economic Development: Connecting Product Consumption for Enterprises and Cooperatives”, Mr. Nguyen Quoc Toan, Director of the Department of Agricultural Processing and Market Development according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). The prime minister has just approved a pilot project to build a standard agricultural and forestry area for the period 2022-2025.
On the territory of 46 districts and cities of 13 provinces, the project will establish 5 material areas related to planning and management of socio-economic development planning of each place with a size of 166,800 ha.
In addition to restructuring crops, reorganizing production and improving people’s income, the project also invests in and improves the technical infrastructure for production through the formation of production links, processing and consumption between companies, cooperatives and farmers.
“The agricultural sector aims to reduce input production costs by 5-10%, reduce post-harvest losses by 5-10% and increase the value in the area of project implementation by 10-20%. At the same time, preferential credit policy, agricultural insurance and connection support are implemented synchronously,” Mr. Toan said.
The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, which identifies people as the main subject for building regional links, will have accompanying plans such as: The place will no longer be bound by administrative borders and will be deeply and comprehensively involved in the construction of 5 processing centers: Rice (Thao Son – An Giang); Rice – Organic Shrimp (An Minh – Kien Giang), Shrimp Processing (Cu Lao Dung – Soc Trang), Fruits (My Hiep – Dong Thap); Coffee (Gia Lai).
People will benefit if regional connections are encouraged.
According to the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance, the country has about 3.28 million working households with more than 7 million members in the collective economy sector, accounting for about 38% of the total number of households. 1,600 supply chains for safe agricultural products involving more than 300 companies and 150 cooperatives have been formed.
The percentage of main agricultural products consumed through production links increased from 10% (in 2017 – before the implementation of Decree No. 98/2018/ND-CP) to over 30% today. In this, the percentage of agricultural cooperatives that combine and sell agricultural products to farmers reached 37%, an increase of 25%.
Mr. Nguyen Van Thinh, vice chairman of Vietnam Cooperative Alliance, assessed that in the context of the domestic and international situation with many fluctuations, regional linkage and product consumption linkage have become an urgent issue.
“Through the forum, we hope that many regional government and executive organizations will be proposed to ensure regulation and management for regional needs and carry out state administration,” Thinh said.
In addition, the leaders of the Cooperative Union called for a tightening of the “4-house” connection (including the cooperative connection model). According to Mr. Thinh, this is the basis for overcoming the current limitations in agricultural production while building a solid foundation, promoting the benefits of each place and region, and eliminating unnecessary middlemen.
The Department of Domestic Market (Ministry of Industry and Trade) shares the same view as Mr. Thinh that cooperative groups, cooperatives and collective economy sectors need to promote the application of electronic commerce in circulation and distribution activities, particularly agricultural commodities products.
Ministries and branches closely coordinate with municipalities and enterprises to organize many conferences to connect supply and demand, promote agricultural trade for exchange, find solutions to solve difficulties, promote market expansion and increase the consumption of agricultural products promote domestic and foreign markets.
In the coming period, the association of cooperatives intends to concentrate cooperatives and smallholders scattered in groups to apply science and technology to production, promote mechanization, and inspect, monitor or purchase agricultural products.
Instead of spreading investments, cooperatives are recommended to focus on the production of a specific tree and animal species with specific strengths such as productivity, high quality, reasonable price and suitability for market demand. Since then, concentrated and specialized production areas have formed.