Enactment of the Fundamental Act on Cooperatives and Its Implications for Rural Development Policy

The Cooperatives Act was enacted. This enabled people to establish easily cooperatives at various fields. A cooperative is an important vehicle for rural community development. Therefore, the enactment of the Cooperatives Act can be a significant chance for rural policy. The Cooperatives Act have made three significant changes. First, cooperatives can start businesses at all the fields except for financial and insurance business. Second, requisites for people to establish cooperatives have been alleviated exceptionaly. Third, the Cooperatives Act introduced a new cooperative organization, social cooperative which aims to serve the socially excluded class. The self-help approach places rural community members at the core of a development process with two goals: to improve the quality of life within the community and to facilitate the community’s capacity building. Community cooperatives contribute to accomplish those goals. One of the roles for cooperatives is to provide products and services at competitive prices. Providing a good or service at a competitive price bcomes increasingly important in some rural communities declines. Cooperative development processes have bic impacts on the ablility of community members to increase human asset and social capital. We conducted a survey targeting rural community businesses to grasp inclinations toward establishing cooperatives. The Cooperatives Act has gained low level of recognition. But so many community businesses wanted to establish cooperatives. This means there is a possibility for many community businesses to establish cooperatives without sufficient understanding. We suggested some policy issues for coping with this situation, as followings. First, the governments should provides rural community residents with opportunities to learn about cooperatives. Second, the current legal systems and regulations about business and social service should be reviewed to do away with the possible discrimination between the new cooperatives and the other forms of incoporation. Third, the cooperation of cooperatives should be encouraged and facilitated in rural communities.