During the first six months of the current fiscal year, Federal Cooperative Agency managed to set up 2,807 cooperatives that are equipped with 167 million Birr capital.

According to Usman Sirur, Director General of the Agency, the plan was to establish 2,043 new cooperatives that have a total capital of 186 million Birr. Yet the Agency managed to set up more cooperatives with a lesser capital.

Usman explained that the Agency focused on capacity building of existing primary cooperatives and unions. He furthered the Agency undertook activities to boost farmers market share in the agriculture products to 55 percent.

The Director General also explained strengthening the urban and rural linkage would be the core activity of the Agency in the second half of the fiscal year. According to him, the Agency aims to earn better income from export of agricultural products in the second half of the fiscal year.

During the first half of the year, the Agency trained 1.6 million citizens across Ethiopia. As a result, it was able to recruit 590,000 new cooperative members.

At this moment, the number of cooperatives is 74,449 while there are 354 unions across the nation. In the meantime, the number of cooperative members has reached 14,054,000.

Source: Walta Information Center