The co-operative economic sector in HCM City aims to achieve an annual growth rate of 10 per cent from 2017 – 2020, said the municipal Co-operative Alliance’s Chairwoman Le Hoang Yen on Tuesday.

The HCMC Co-operative Alliance also targets to raise its contribution to the city’s GDP to 1.2 per cent and attract more 50,000 people working in the co-operative sector during the period, Yen said at a ceremony to celebrate the alliance’s 20th anniversary.

Speaking at the ceremony, vice chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le Thanh Liem lauded the great contribution of the cooperative sector in general and the HCMC Co-operative Alliance in particular to the city’s economy.

Liem urged the alliance to take part in the city’s seven designated “breakthrough” programmes which focus on human resource development, administrative reform, growth quality, competitiveness improvement, traffic congestion and flooding control, and cityscape rehabilitation.

He also hoped the alliance will educate its members on the country’s laws and policies on development of the cooperative economy and bolster the growth of the sector as well as the local economy.

The alliance now operates the country’s biggest fund in support of cooperative members. It has provided cooperative members with soft loans with interest rates equivalent to just 80-90 per cent of those offered by commercial banks over the past 15 years.

Its fund, called CCM, has lent more than VND7.1 trillion to over 541,000 members by the end of 2016.

The alliance plans to establish 1,500 more cooperative groups, 175 new co-operatives and 10 co-operative unions from now to 2020, and provide about VND1.7 trillion in credit to members each year. — VNS