Market power to the people

There were success stories in the fields of sugar and cotton in India, dairy in India and Bangladesh, coffee in Tanzania and Kenya and in several countries a more independent credit sector. “Nevertheless, with market liberalisation in the 1990s and the withdrawal of government support, many state-sponsored co-operatives could not compete with the private sector and had to shut down.” However, some have re-formed independent of government.

Seven per cent of Africans are co-op members, with 554 companies in Uganda in 1995 growing to 7,500 now, and farmer groups meeting a growing supermarket demand for fresh fruit and vegetables.

In East Timor, with help from the National Cooperative Business Association of the USA, a network of 20,000 farmers has been formed, processing one third of the coffee for export.

But, writes Lamrabat, food is not the whole story. Co-operatives also account for 25 per cent of savings in Bolivia, 24 per cent of the health sector in Colombia, 55 per cent of the retail market in Singapore, 36 per cent in Denmark and 14 per cent in Hungary; and for more than 100 million jobs around the world, with dairy organisations in India now including members of different castes.

Informal sector workers have formed co-ops to assist self-employment while in rural areas savings and credit unions provide access to banking services and opportunities for raising incomes. This has an impact on achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals of primary education, gender equality and reduction in child mortality.

In developed countries these organisations have grown over the past two centuries largely without government interference. Often first was a “friendly” or mutual health society that insured people against sickness and provided basic health care. In countries with a mixed system of state and private funding, such as France, Germany or the Netherlands, becoming a member of one of the health mutuals is still the main way for people to gain access to medical care. In the Pacific Northwest of USA one co-operative provides health services for 570,000 members, another in the Mid-West has 630,000 members. In Japan, 120 consumer co-operatives provide health care for three million members who also meet in small groups to discuss prevention.

Consumer bodies are the market leaders in Italy, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, and are very active in the Scandinavian countries and Atlantic Canada. In the UK, which has seen fierce competition among consumer chains, co-operatives are fifth in market share and pre-eminent in the small supermarket sector. These have a strong record of creating decent working conditions, fair trade with developing countries, setting standards for honest labelling, and promoting healthy diet.

Retail groups provide small storekeepers with grocery, hardware and pharmacy supplies and compete directly against the large multiple chains. Worker co-operatives, particularly in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the Basque region of Spain provide shared services such as banking, technical education and product development. Also emerging are services for older people and those with disabilities.

Electricity companies work in rural areas ignored by the private sector, small dairy co-operatives are growing rapidly in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa to provide raw milk, and there has been a major resurgence of marketing co-ops in Ethiopia, Zambia and Honduras. In Ethiopia 400 co-operatives with a total family membership of 2.5 million are developing educational materials.

In Brazil the biggest medical system in the world has 98,000 doctors serving 12 million patients, medical networks in India are used for health education and also in Africa facing the special threat of HIV-AIDS. In Calcutta 7,000 sex workers, members of the Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society, have started a micro-credit scheme marketing handicrafts and creating a peer education program.

Civil wars and ethnic conflicts can destroy social capital but “there is evidence that even during conflict co-operatives can survive. In Sri Lanka and Nepal they have been the only independent organisations allowed by both sides in the civil war zone”, Lamrabat reports.

In Rwanda, a credit union system was rebuilt by the World Council of Credit Unions without regard to ethnicity, and now there are 149 CUs with nearly 400,000 members. Electricity co-operatives in Bangladesh have a common membership among 28 million users.