What are the benefits of cooperatives for farmers?

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This question was answered by the Secretary of the Secretariat of the Committee of agribusiness NCE RK "Atameken" Rustem Kurmanov

On 29^th of October 2015 the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev signed the Law "On agricultural cooperatives", which provides the basis for the economic unification of various agricultural producers. Today, at a press briefing at the office of the Service of Central Communications was discussed the topic how does this law benefit agricultural producers.

"Previously, the procedure of agricultural cooperation was regulated to the extreme, the process of cooperation was controlled by about 5 laws. Now a law is quite clear in which all the cooperative principles are spelled out. Amendments to the Law allow cooperatives to profit, before they worked only to satisfy their consumption needs. This profit can be distributed among the members of the cooperative, or can be directed to the development of the association. The cooperatives can now include not only farms but also legal entities. For example, processing plant, together with the farmer can organize a cooperative", - said Kurmanov.

In addition, he said, a special tax regime for legal persons will also be spread on cooperatives. "The new law allows cooperatives and its members to be more democratic. All cooperative members have one vote and make decisions together. Previously, those who contributed more to the authorized capital, had more votes. So often poor farmers had fewer rights", - said the representative of NCE RK.

Kurmanov said that the law provides for an audit of cooperatives. "I mean the members of the association may hire an auditing company to check the activities of the cooperative on transparency", - he explained.

Before the end of 2016 it is planned to implement 4 pilot cooperatives: Almaty region (vegetables), Zhambyl region (milk), North Kazakhstan region (oilseeds) and Aktobe region (meat). "We will take patronage of all the organizational work that will contribute to the development of cooperatives. We want to make a standard model cooperative, then to cascade the experience on the republican scale", - said Kurmanov.

The ead of the farm “ES Agro” Sergey Erin also made a speech at the briefing. As a farmer he expressed his opinion on the law. "Frankly, at first we had some skepticism. But then, when the law was developed, we saw constructive offers in certain provisions of the law, which arose our genuine interest in it. We have seen that the law, indeed, allows us to look 5-10 years into the future, and to be actively involved in the work. Now that the law has been passed, and very many of the proposals of the Union of Farmers and NCE were taken into account, we understand that the law is made for us", - he said.