The Cooperative Development Authority (CDA), in cognizance of the importance of cooperative data to show impact and contribution of cooperatives and cooperativism to national development, conducted a consultative meeting with cooperative leaders on Thursday, January 5, 2017 at the CDA Conference Room.
The consultation was undertaken to solicit feedbacks, comments and commitments from the sector on what data and information should CDA publish including ways on how to generate the needed data intensively. This activity was also conducted in response to the Tax Reform Proposals of the Department of Finance (DOF).
Taking off from the data presented by the CDA for the year 2015 based on reports from cooperatives, representatives of cooperatives and partner organizations who were present agreed that there is a pressing need of generating comprehensive data from cooperatives to enable the CDA to present the actual state of cooperatives. In this case, the number of cooperatives submitting Annual Reports must be increased. CDA and the cooperative federations and partners submit to work hand in hand to intensify the campaign for the submission of reports by the cooperatives.
More than getting the figures and statistics, it was also observed that there is a need to gather information on the direct impact of cooperatives in its members and the community as well, particularly on its contribution to government revenue. With these, though cooperatives have tax exemption privilege, they are in fact tax contributors – this is what the CDA and the cooperative sector wanted to impress upon the public and the government. From their purchases and other transactions, and employment generation, cooperatives are undoubtedly contributors to key indicators of growth and development
As a consensus, a Technical Working Group composed of the CDA, PCC, NATCCO, ULSC, FICCO, NORLUCEDEC, LCDOP, and SDCC was created to develop and identify actions to this concern.
