Why Cooperative?

J.B. BitonioLecture/Presentation Trainers Training for the La Union CDOs Project of the Provincial Government of La UnionSeptember 24-26, 2012

A cooperative is a member-owned and controlled business that operates for the mutual benefit of its members

Members who use their services or purchase their products

A Cooperatives promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people and are a major economic force in developed countries and a powerful business model in developing ones

United States with 305.6 million members.

The Co-operative Movement brings together over one billion people around the world. The United Nations estimated in 1994 that the livelihood of

nearly 3 billion people, or half of the world's population, was made secure by co-operative enterprise. These enterprises continue to play significant economic and social roles in their communities.

160.8 million

97.6 million

75.8 million

40.6 million

7.29 million

97.6 million

40.6 million

The country's poverty incidence is at roughly 30 percent, which means about a third of the nearly 100 million Filipinos subsist on less than two U.S. dollars a day.

30 %

Region I cooperative membership

1,423,124 as of

July 2012

Region I. Coordination Board (NSCB)  Statwatch data, it has a total population of

4,546,789.  Of the stated population count

Co-ops serve a range of sectors, including housing, food, worker, agriculture, service, financial, youth and community. 

The Philippines has been in a boom and bust cycle for several decades now. We have failed to achieve the necessary GDP growths to bring us to developed nation status relative to other East Asian nations (i.e., 8 percent growth of South Korea in the last 50 years and double-digit growth rates of China in the last 20 years). The best in 19 years we have achieved is 7.3 percent growth in 2007.

The rest of the decade it has been 3 to 5 percent growth on average annually, too small to overcome poverty levels pegged at nearly 1/3 of the nation.Sen. Pangilinan (2012) 

Poverty, with all its faces and forms, is our country’s biggest problem, not because of its drag on the economy, its effects on the environment, or the unsightly slums, but because this is simply not the way people are meant to live. Therefore, all our causes—education reform, transparency, infrastructure development, environmental protection, etc.—must ultimately lead to the uplift of the human situation of the Filipino poor.

Ramon R. del Rosario Jr (2012). 

We must together exploit this rare and great opportunity to move our country forward and upward Let us set our differences aside and focus on what we have in common.

We are but one people, have but one country and one future, and no more time to waste.

Ramon R. del Rosario Jr (2012). 

Merger Consolidation Federate Branches Subsidiaries Laboratory Cooperatives