HCM City aims for 10-pct growth of cooperative economy

The HCMC Cooperative Alliance also targets to raise its contribution to the city’s GDP to 1.2 percent and attract more 50,000 people working in the cooperative sector during the period, Ms Yen said at a ceremony to celebrate the alliance’s 20th anniversary.

Speaking at the ceremony, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le Thanh Liem lauded the great contribution of the cooperative sector in general and the HCMC Cooperative Alliance in particular to the city’s economy.

Mr Liem urged the alliance to take part in the city’s seven designated “breakthrough” programmes which focus on human resource development, administrative reform, growth quality, competitiveness improvement, traffic congestion and flooding control, and cityscape rehabilitation.

He also hoped the alliance will educate its members on the country’s laws and policies on development of the cooperative economy and bolster the growth of the sector as well as the local economy.

The alliance now operates the country’s biggest fund in support of cooperative members. It has provided cooperative members with soft loans with interest rates equivalent to just 80-90 percent of those offered by commercial banks over the past 15 years.

Its fund, called CCM, has lent more than 7.1 trillion VND to over 541,000 members by the end of 2016.

The alliance plans to establish 1,500 more cooperative groups, 175 new cooperatives and 10 cooperative unions from now to 2020, and provide about 1.7 trillion VND in credit to members each year.