Participants at the second ICA-AP meeting on development of cooperatives in Pacific Islands.
ICA-AP along with the University of Newcastle (UoN) and support from the ICA-EU Partnership on Cooperatives in Development (#Coops4Dev) organized the 2nd ICA-AP Forum on Development of Cooperatives in Pacific Islands on December 12, 2019. It came as a follow-up to the one in Vanuatu in 2018 and aimed at mainstreaming representation from Pacific cooperatives within the ICA’s development processes.
The Forum on “Cooperation among Cooperatives and Mutuals in the Asia-Pacific region – working together to achieve a flourishing and sustainable future” was attended by delegates from academia, cooperative federations and government agencies from Australia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Kiribati, and New Zealand. It was useful in bringing cooperative apex organizations in Australia, the Business Council of Cooperatives and Mutuals (BCCM), and New Zealand, the Cooperative Business New Zealand (CBNZ), closer to the stakeholders representing cooperatives in the Pacific.
Mr. Anthony Taylor, Policy officer at BCCM shared that there are over 2,000 cooperatives in Australia with the top 100 having a turnover of $AU30 billion. However, despite large membership, cooperatives do not have a large market share in consumer/retail markets. Energy is an emerging sector, but there are legislative and policy barriers for community energy, particularly in the retail segment. Cooperatives in Australia actively support women and youth groups.
Mrs. Kanmari Betiota, Director of the Business Regulatory Centre within the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Cooperatives in Kiribati talked about the 11 business sectors covered by cooperatives in the country, with copra-farming and fisheries dominating the space. She highlighted compliance issues, outdated legal frameworks, political interference, and lack of access to international development and capacity building funds as the main challenges.
Ms. Roz Henry, Chief Executive Officer at CBNZ shared that cooperatives started in New Zealand in 1846. In 2012, the United Nations listed New Zealand as the most cooperative economy. The top 30 cooperatives, mutuals and societies in New Zealand have a total revenue $NZ 42.3 billion, assets of $33.5 billion, membership of 1.4 million and employ close to 48,500 individuals.
Mr. Faizal Khan, Director and Registrar of Cooperatives in the Department of Cooperative Business, Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism in Fiji talked about the National Cooperative Federation which was recently established under the Cooperatives Act of 2018. He stressed upon the need to modernise the Cooperative Act of 1996 and to strengthen training curriculum through international accreditations.
Mr. Balasubramanian Iyer, Regional Director, ICA-AP provided a comprehensive round-up to the participants wherein he highlighted that cooperatives in the Pacific are rich in history in terms of social mobilisation, culture and norms, played an important part in national independence and nation building and are drivers in terms of size, members, range, influence, operations etc. He identified issues such as lack of education, ineffective legal & policy environment, lack of cooperative statistics, lack of access to finance as the common challenges for cooperatives in the Pacific. He said that two important and ongoing activities of mapping cooperative actors and legal framework analysis under the ICA-EU Partnership would certainly benefit the stakeholders.
The members in Pacific Island countries were encouraged to undertake needs assessment to identify gaps to strengthen the capacity of primaries to form federations, and promote and develop the federations. ICA-AP can facilitate such an exercise with support from experts and member networks.
