“(B)etween 2004 and 2006, the co-op industry has provided nearly five million jobs to unemployed Filipinos.”
by Ducky Paredes
The cooperatives industry in the country has gone a long way. The stereotyped image of co-ops as small, makeshift corner stores and hole-in-the-wall mini-marts in rural areas has long been outdated. Today, cooperatives are found in offices that are managed by professionals well honed in business.
For instance, the Sorosoro Ibaba Development Corp. (SIDC) in Barangay Sorosoro Ibaba, Batangas City started in 1969 with only 59 members who invested just P200 each. Their first venture was a sari-sari store that sold basic commodities exclusively to the residents of Sorosoro Ibaba. This enterprise with a starting capital of only P11,800 later expanded into selling animal feeds and veterinary products aimed at addressing the needs of some of its members who were into poultry and hog raising.
Today, SIDC has 5,000 members and about 6,000 associate members, many from neighboring provinces like Laguna, Quezon, Oriental and Occidental Mindoro, and from as far as Panay Island and Metro Manila — a tribute to its resounding success any way one looks at it.
From its humble beginnings, SIDC is now housed in its own multi-storey building with 252 regular employees who are mostly co-op members. It has gone into diverse interests — poultry feeds, piggery, artificial insemination, slaughterhouse, meat processing, a meat shop, a grocery, aqua care plus a thriving gasoline station which is reportedly the most profitable in its area. Certainly, it is now worth much more than P11,800 and SIDC has made its members individually richer.
Nowadays, success stories of co-ops such as SIDC’s are becoming commonplace, a far cry from when cooperatives were looked at as businesses that would naturally die out when its managers commit the usual mistakes in running businesses or because the funds have been depleted.
If the co-op business is robust and vibrant today, it is to the credit of crusaders like former senator and three-term Makati congressman Agapito “Butz” Aquino who, for years, has been leading the drive to promote cooperativism among Filipinos. His efforts have paid off as cooperatives today are a far cry from what they were a little over a decade ago, the once low-profile, insignificant sector has morphed into a major player in the country’s economic landscape.
For one, cooperatives have become a major job provider and a hot spot for growth in our ailing economy that seems to constantly need propping up. In 2003 alone for example, cooperatives pumped in a staggering P113 billion into the economic mainstream. Records also show that between 2004 and 2006, the co-op industry has provided nearly five million jobs to unemployed Filipinos. If not for the government’s fixation on manufacturing, exports and constant politicking, Aquino feels that the numbers would even be more impressive.
According to the Cooperatives Development Authority, there are now almost 5,000 credit co-ops, 1,500 consumers, 33,500 multi-purpose agri-based and approximately 24,000 non-agri-based coops. In Metro Manila alone, almost all of the nearly 4,000 co-ops were into money lending and savings activity, and the figure is still rising.
Let’s face it: cooperatives mean big bucks and many people are slowly realizing that when pooled together, small change can sometimes reverse fortunes, for the better. This is probably why people in the know like Aquino have time and again, been sounding their clarion call for everyone to “Cooperativise.”
It is not common knowledge but some co-ops no longer deal in hundreds of thousands or millions of pesos. They transact business in billions, something that stakeholders in the industry could only dream about a few years back.
To spread the gospel of cooperativism, Aquino constantly travels to the nooks and crannies of the archipelago. Everywhere he goes, he returns to the basics of the Cooperatives Code Act, which he authored when he was still a Senator. The law, RA 6938, was the shot in the arm that provided the much-needed energy that triggered the cooperatives boom of the 90’s, propelling the industry to where it is today … from a motley 800 disorganized aggrupation to the present 78,000 strong sector. Aquino is currently the president of the Philippine Cooperatives Center (PCC) and concurrently chairman emeritus of the National Cooperatives Movement (NCM).
A hardcore cooperatives man, Aquino firmly believes that pooling resources into a common fund will benefit not only the individual stakeholders but the entire nation as well. “Monetary union” is what he calls the process. Fast tracking formations of postal and water service and electric distribution cooperatives are currently one of his pressing initiatives.
He envisions that one day, water and electric distribution co-ops could buy into big time monopolies like Miracle and Manila to ease the high utility cost anxiety that consumers get every time they receive their monthly energy and water bills.
In the meantime, one of Aquino’s missions is to weld and galvanize all cooperatives into one solid national association. Through the PCC and the NCM, he hopes to forge a united industry that would have a strong voice in the formulation of government policies involving the co-op business. Despite the unprecedented gains it has achieved in only a short span of time, Aquino still believes that a united national co-op movement is the dynamo that is needed to further spark and spur the dramatic growth of this sunrise industry. And he pushes this through constant bonding with the country’s cooperative federation and union leaders via meetings, seminars, workshops and dialogues.
In line with this, the PCC, in cooperation with the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) and the Quezon City government will hold the 10th National Cooperatives Summit on October 10-11 at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City. Billed as the largest conferences ever in the history of the industry. The summit aims to develop a common cooperative development agenda for the sector to strengthen and promote solidarity among the co-ops now operating in the country. Some 10,000 participants are expected to attend the landmark event.
I have known Butz since we were high school classmates at the Atone. He seems simply an easy-going guy but when the time came to move, we marched together as members of the ATOM, the August Twenty-One Movement, one of the forerunners to the Edsa Uno, the People Power revolution. Knowing his tenacity and persistence, I am confident that his grandiose dream will become a reality. All it needs is what Ateneo cheerleaders scream at the top of their lungs whenever our team needs a boost: “One Big Fight!”
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“The greatest resource of the judiciary is its justices, judges and personnel. The judiciary is a living, breathing, dynamic organism that takes its sustenance from sheer brain power. As laws are dynamic and ever-evolving, so must the machinery, which moves its implementation. Scholarships and seminars must be readily available for intellectual and professional growth. Knowledge and experience are vital commodities in dispensing justice, and so these must be honed with constant learning and practice.”- Judge Victoria Isabel Paredes, on accepting the Chief Justice Cayetano Arellano Awardee for Outstanding Regional Trial Court Judge
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hvp 10.05.10
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