During the past nine months of the fiscal year 7,283 new cooperatives have been established, according to the Federal Cooperative Agency.

Yigzaw Dagnew, Public Relations Directorate Director at the Agency said, these cooperatives have 831,012 members and have over 94.3 Million Birr capital.

The Agency’s has done more than what it has planned, according to Yigzaw the Agency’s plan was to establish 6,833 cooperatives.

Nonetheless, it has has not achieved the 190.8 Million Birr capita target set for the reported period.

Another plan the Agency failed to achieve was the number of unions it planned to set up. It planned to set up 30 unions with the capital of 26 Million Birr. But it only managed to establish 8 unions with only 11.6 Million Birr capital.

Yigzaw noted, cooperatives saved 128.2 Million Birr while unions saved 12.2 Million Birr. Cooperatives and unions distributed 80 Million Birr and 11.5 Million Birr respectively, he added.

In addition to this, 16 Cooperatives have managed to supply 62,300 quintals of maize to the United Nations World Food Program. Yigzaw attributed the reason to this success to be the effort made to create a local market linkage.

Yigzwa added some 10 Billion Birr loan was given to cooperatives and unions in order to procure agricultural inputs during production season.

Source: Walta Information Center