FAO organized two workshops within the project “Support to agricultural Cooperatives Reforms in Egypt”, in Alexandria and Luxor
In order to turn the cooperatives into socio-economic organizations managed efficiently by their members
Alexandria / Luxor March 1st, 2017: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Egypt organized two workshops within the “Support to Agricultural Cooperatives Reforms in Egypt” project, which aims to support the agricultural cooperatives reforms through a fitting scheme in order to amend and develop the current Agricultural Cooperation Act, and work on building a common vision for the future of the agricultural cooperative sector.
The project is held under the patronage of His Excellency Dr. Abdel Moneim al-Banna, Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation.
Officials and expert consultants from FAO and the ministry of Agriculture, have participated in the two workshops that were held in the governorates of Alexandria and Luxor, in the presence of representatives of agricultural cooperatives in Upper and Lower Egypt and with the cooperation of representatives of the ‘Union des Producteurs Agricoles’ (UPA) in Montreal in Canada. The FAO had organized the inception workshop of this project last July in Ain Sokhna.
The workshop presented and discussed the results of field meetings with the members of the associations’ boards and members of the general and local assemblies in some of the 10 Egyptian governorates. During the meetings, the internal and external factors affecting the performance of cooperatives have been identified. Moreover, a vision has been put for the looked-for situation of the cooperative sector after a period of time extending over 7 years of work and amendments, as well as execution plans, timetables and responsibilities that would help in reaching the desired situation.
Dr. Hussein Gadain, representative of FAO in Egypt said: “The agricultural cooperatives play an important role in agricultural, economic and rural developments in the world’s developed and developing countries. Agricultural cooperatives in Egypt have been playing this role for many years now, and with the completion of the project, they will be able to switch to independent socio-economic organizations that are managed in a participatory approach by their members. The cooperatives will be providing the revenues, data and marketing, and they will be able to establish partnerships with other cooperatives or private sector.”
For his part, Engineer Ezz al-Arab Ahmed Salama, head of the Central Administration of Agricultural Cooperation at the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, said: “Reforming the agricultural cooperatives in Egypt should take advantage of the legislation and amendments implemented on the Agricultural Cooperation Act. It is also important to work on another legislative reform related to organized labor and freedom abiding by the legislations, as well as structural and functional reform for agricultural cooperatives, and the financial reforms through the activation of Article 17 of the law stipulating the establishment of a cooperative bank to which cooperative societies will contribute.”
Dr. Mohammed Abdel al-Aal, the project consultant said: “The situation is now convenient for the cooperatives and their smallholders members to take advantage of the new opportunities that emerged by modifying the Agricultural Cooperatives Act to shift towards a better future; the project aims at helping the concerned parties in supporting the reform and developing the cooperative work in Egypt by working together to reach a future program to convert cooperatives from quasi-governmental organizations to socio-economic ones that are efficiently managed by their members. This shift is expected to take place in the medium term.”
It is worth noting that the agricultural cooperatives in Egypt are among the largest cooperative entities in the whole world, with about 7 thousand cooperative associations and about 18 million members; their competences allow them to provide various services to the Egyptian economy, and therefore, the Egyptian government sought to support cooperatives by giving them more economic freedom through the modifications of law No. 124 of year 2014. There were also some amendments done to some of the articles of the law No. 122 of year 1981.
01/03/2017