Ministry of Social Affairs, Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia organized Cooperative Societies Forum in Riyadh that was attended by more than 150 delegates from Saudi Arabia and other countries of the GCC sub-region viz: UAE, Kuwait, Yemen, Baharain and Oman.

On behalf of The Custodian of The Two Holy Mosques, the forum was inaugurated by His Excellency the Minister of Social Affairs and addressed by key cooperators and scholars from Saudi Arabia and participating countries. Technical presentations on global cooperative perspective were made by resource persons from ICA Asia Pacific namely Mr Shil Kwan Lee, Regional Director Mr Rajiv I.D. Mehta, Deputy Regional Director and Mr Zee Yoong Kang the CEO of Singapore National Trades Unions Congress’s co-operative training company, NTUC LearningHub.

The forum took note of the following global scenario:

Cooperatives in most of the developing economies have shown considerable resilience as an organisational form and as a voice for the active user members otherwise unable to attain economy of scale.

Co-operatives when performing efficiently represent a private sector model that provides many benefits and opportunities to its members. The resurgence of global interest in co-operatives is not a passing fashion; co-operatives represent a cost-effective and sustainable way to support private sector development ensuring inclusive growth of national economy.

Research by the World Bank has concluded that cooperatives are still "the preferred form of organization and perhaps the only organization with which rural people are familiar with".

The forum remained committed to establish a strong self reliant co-operative movements in the GCC countries, for the growth and development of cooperative movement with initial government support in the form of policy, legislation and funding as happened in most of the developed cooperatives. ICA AP was entrusted with the task of providing much needed technical support and international networking for the mainstreaming of the country cooperative movements with the Asia Pacific movement and global movement at large.

Relevance of Co-operatives in Global Context was perceived as under:

· Never in the past regeneration of moral values was so intensely needed as today

· The World needs a reliable and responsible global society based on higher values, fellow feelings, tolerance for each others faiths and beliefs, mutuality, fraternity and fidelity to deal with the present situation of unrest and distrust

· Massive efforts are needed to enhance the economic growth rate, understand the demand supply situation, create more gainful employment opportunities, establish efficient supportive infrastructure, ensure a minimum standard of living, enable people a reasonable dwelling unit, provide needed health care and medical services and diversify scope of collectively owned ventures like service industry, hospitality sector and local transport facility

· Policy support is much needed than before to meet social obligations, check exodus of youths from their roots, remove illiteracy, arrange adult education and information, protect environment, promote and preserve peace in view of the peoples impatience to lead a better life in healthy living surroundings with basic amenities

· The Governments must try to see that the co-operatives are the best option for use by any Government in delivering the package aimed at reducing poverty and empowering the disadvantaged population and also creating a just and equitable society where self regulation, self help and mutual assistance are recognized as the nucleus of individual dignity and commercial harmony.

Actions anticipated:

01. Arrange annual comprehensive dialogue between the cooperative movements and the Governments to ameliorate the prospects of cooperatives.

02. Initiate policy framework to make cooperatives as most legitimate value driven community based enterprises / institutions requiring a fair and preferential treatment over other forms of business organizations.

03. Build capacity of the cooperatives through dissemination of right knowledge cum information on cooperatives and the businesses they are in along with the development of managerial and operational skills for optimum utilization of capital and human resources for an assured success of the cooperatives.

04. Organize thematic forums, conferencing and dialogues together with exposure cum exchange programs to successful cooperatives in the Asian region at large for the first hand experience of the policy makers, leaders and prospective managers of the cooperatives so as to broad base the scope of cooperatives in the non-conventional sectors like women, youth, public support services, tourism, transport, health, child care etc of the economy. ICA Asia Pacific to facilitate the interventions.

05. Formulate cooperative development strategy as a part of advocacy campaign with the governments with a time bound preferential treatment (financial and fiscal) for the cooperatives till they attain self reliance and autonomy.

Anticipated Benefits:

· Enhanced capacity of co-operatives to serve their communities well, compete with MNCs and survive successfully in the competitive market economy
· Improved and advanced knowledge and information on HRD and business development
· Appropriate management practices of co-operatives put in place
· Ideas, knowledge, information and experiences about policy and legislation on cooperatives in other countries shared and exchanged
· Co-operative brand is properly positioned in the local, domestic and international market

Following Co-operative Advantages were unequivocally agreed:

· Co-operation promotes development by people’s consent and consensus with cohesion, harmony, transparency and peace.

· Co-operatives combine business and moral values with reasonable objective of service maximization in contrast to profit maximization, the core objective of private enterprises.

· Co-operatives have operational validity under all forms of economic systems e.g. capitalism (encourages individual initiatives), socialism (equality, equity and non-exploitation) and mixed economy (acts as a balancing option with the public and private sectors).

· In the EMEs (Emerging Market Economies) the propensity to consume is constantly on the rise. Co-operative consumer stores help in creating commercial links directly with the production points ensuring the quality, price and increasing the own surplus margins.

· Co-operatives ease out market imperfections.


Role of ICA:
The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) is a worldwide international association of co-operative organizations of all types. Founded in London on 18 August 1895 by the International Co-operative Congress, the ICA has affiliates in 110 countries with 251 national and 4 international level organizations as members serving over 800 million individual members worldwide.
The ICA has its head office in Geneva, Switzerland, with regional offices in New Delhi, India (for Asia and the Pacific), in Nairobi, Kenya (for Africa), in San Jose, Costa Rica (for Americas), in Belgium (for Europe).

The International Co-operative Alliance, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ICA-AP) plays a vital role in international co-operative development, presently serving over 520 million individual members through 62 national-level member organizations in 23 countries. ICA through its global network is capable of arranging technical collaborations for the attainment of the results anticipated by the forum.