MINI CARNIVAL: Taib drops a giant 50 sen replica coin into a savings box to declare open the carnival. Also seen are (from left) Industrial Estate Development Assistant Minister Datuk Peter Nansian Ngusie, Naroden, Salang (partly hidden), Len Talif and Rohani.
KUCHING: New and serious approaches are needed to restructure the smaller unsuccessful cooperatives in the rural areas to become viable organisations.
Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud yesterday highlighted the need for these less successful business ventures to combine their resources to forge a strong cooperatives network where funds could be managed more effectively.
The new structure would become a network to individuals already interested to invest capital into a cooperative, where the fund would be collected and channelled to bigger successful investment. A bigger umbrella body could be appointed to manage and invest the fund.
Taib said that through such effort, funds collected from unproductive cooperatives could be invested into successful ventures in other areas to achieve higher profit margin.
“We should take a hard look at the structure of cooperative movement in the state to find the best approach that would encourage more savings from participants and use their funds more effectively.
“The more than 300,000 co-operative members in the state show that the participation here is quite big. It consisted of more than 10 per cent of the state’s 2.5 million population. Unfortunately, the result has not been encouraging for most of the smaller rural cooperatives due to the demographic structure here.
“We should restructure our past approaches to transform these cooperatives into better and well managed organisations.
Re-structuring initiative needed — CM
“A study on this re-structuring initiative is needed for the government to be able to provide better support to all the co-operatives,” he said when officiating at the 2012 Sarawak Co-operative Entrepreneurs Movement, Retailers and Wholesalers Mini Carnival.
The inaugural event jointly organised by the Malaysian Cooperatives Commission (CCM) and Chief Minister’s Office Bumiputera Entrepreneur Development Unit was held at the State Indoor Stadium here.
Taib added that most rural co-operatives could not achieve the same economic success as their urban counterparts because of smaller customer base, population demographic and lack of infrastructure which contributed to higher cost of logistic components.
He beilieved the failure of business ventures in the rural areas was not due to the lack in efforts.
Taib recommended investors (co-operative participants) to take a look at the emerging cottage industries and also companies operating at the Halal hub in the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (Score).
“We can collect their money and take up equity in some of the best Halal hub companies in Tanjung Manis so that investors (rural co-operatives) could participate in the hub’s development.
“The Halal hub has strong potential to develop in the export market for the state. The worldwide export market is expected to reach US$2 trillion in the future, attracting giant companies with international marketing organisations,” he continued.
He told Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office (Bumiputera Entrepreneur Development) Datuk Mohd Naroden Majais who was present to call on all unsuccessful co-operatives for a meeting to look into their problems and find a solution to tackle these issues to aid the development of co-operatives in the state.
“Both the state and Federal Government, despite the limited resources in terms of capital provision, are very serious in their efforts to help and develop the co-operatives here especially the rural co-operatives.”
Also present were Domestic Trade, Cooperative and Consumerism (MDTCC) Deputy Minister Datuk Rohani Abdul Karim, Information, Communication, Arts and Culture Deputy Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum, Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office (Promotion of Technical Education) Datu Len Talif Salleh and CCM Development Sector chief Jaafar Muhayat among others.