4th Critical Study on co-operative Legislations and Policies

Abstract

Since its inception, a major endeavour of the ICA Asia Pacific has been to advocate reforms in co-operative laws and policies to continuously improve the environment for co-operatives to function efficiently and to expand their reach. This naturally entailed a review of laws, policies and practices adopted by governments and as a part of this process, ICA has been facilitating interaction between Governments and the co-operative movement in the region through the Asia Pacific Co-operative Ministers' Conference and regional consultations since 1990 apart from undertaking Critical Studies of co-operative laws and polices periodically. The first and second critical studies formed the basis of deliberations for the fourth, fifth and Sixth co-operative Ministers' Conference and generated ideas for positioning the co-operatives in the national economic policies of the Governments of the region. The Third Critical Study (2004) was undertaken in the backdrop of ILO resolution no. 193 adopted on June 3, 2002 on promotion of cooperatives and the UN resolution in 2001 laying down what might be called guidelines for putting in place a legal and policy framework conducive to the growth of co-operatives. The study was undertaken essentially to assess the outcome of reforms initiated in countries following the declarations and recommendations made in the previous conferences and highlighted matters which warranted intervention of the government.