Cooperative Law in Asia and Pacific: Early Results and What Comes Next
At the IX Continental Congress and II International Symposium on Cooperative Law in Panama City on 17 September, Mr. Naveen Singh, Research Officer, and Ms. Monalisa Kashyap, Program Coordinator and Advocacy Officer, both of ICA-AP, presented regional findings from the Legal Framework Analysis (LFA) activity under the ICA-EU Partnership #coops4dev, under the theme “Cooperative Law Today: Asia and Pacific.”
The first cycle, LFA 1.0, has already contributed to legal change in three countries. India created a Ministry of Cooperation in 2021, a step the LFA report had called for, followed by a national cooperation policy in 2025 and new rules on elections and complaints for multi-state societies, although the harder asks on independence were not taken up. Jordan amended its cooperative law in 2025, writing the cooperative principles into the law, giving the movement half the seats on the board that governs it, and setting up a development fund and a training institute, following joint work by ICA-AP and the ILO. Vietnam adopted its Law on Cooperatives in 2023, and four of the five recommendations made were included, among them a lower minimum membership of five instead of seven and a national online register, though the law did not accept the argument that a cooperative is an enterprise.
The second cycle, LFA 2.0, to be implemented from 2024 to 2028, covers countries the first could not reach and revisits those whose laws have since been revised, while strengthening selected earlier LFAs with a revised questionnaire. National experts are already engaged in several countries, and contracting and scoping continue in others: Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Palestine, alongside India, Vietnam and Jordan.
Early trends from the first drafts show distinct approaches. Vietnam’s Law No. 17/2023/QH15, in effect since July 2024, is the most sweeping reform of the three, giving the seven ICA principles binding legal force under Article 8 and recognizing informal groups as a pre-cooperative form. Nepal’s Cooperative Act, 2017 sets up a three-tier oversight system of local, provincial and federal regulators split by annual turnover, with local bodies overseeing cooperatives up to USD 1.6 million and provinces up to USD 3.3 million, and Nepal Rastra Bank also supervising for financial stability. The Philippines’ Cooperative Code (RA 9520) sits alongside a dedicated regulator, the Cooperative Development Authority, and mandates surplus allocation: a 10% reserve fund, up to 10% for education and at least 3% for community development. The sessions showed that legal reform in the region is moving, though unevenly, and that evidence-based legal analysis can help shape it. As the LFA 2.0 reports are finalized, ICA-AP will continue sharing findings with members, governments and partners.