Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
9 April 2009
Maputo — The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Thursday unanimously passed the first reading of a bill establishing a modern legal framework for cooperatives.
The law, drafted by the Assembly's own Agriculture Commission, replaces obsolete legislation from the days of the one-party state and the command economy. "Times have changes, technology has evolved, and the socio-economic reality of today is different from that of 25 years ago", the Commission write in its document justifying the bill.
The existing legal system, it said, envisaged a model that was out of line with today's reality. Much of the legislation had fallen into disuse, and had envisaged a centrally planned economy. It was thus not applicable to the market economy of the 21st century.
The bill thus envisages cooperatives as enterprises - but ones which are not devoted solely to making a profit. Instead they are organisations which are democratically run, which encourage mutual aid, and are aimed at the sustainable development of their communities.
The key difference between a cooperative and a company was that "a cooperative is a union of persons and not a union of capital", said the Commission. "Although, like any other enterprise, a cooperative needs capital, it is not strategically structured simply on the basis of capital accumulation. While in enterprises of a purely capitalist nature capital is synonymous with power, in cooperatives power is personal and unitary".
The Commission envisaged cooperatives as playing a key role as "an instrument capable of avoiding the economic and social stagnation of the rural areas". Their participatory structures would have an impact on rural communities, and they would generate rural wealth.
"In an environment of a scarcity of capital, or imperfect markets, the cooperative is the best way for rural people to gain access to technology, to credit and to specialist assistance, so that they can deal with the great conglomerates involved in agro-business", claimed the Commission.
As effective instruments of rural development, cooperatives could "prevent the economic and social decline that is affecting many Mozambican communities", and could also help combat unemployment.
The Commission rejected the idea that cooperatives were "defective companies", or "hangovers from the past tolerated by the authorities". They were simply a different sort of enterprise, which should enjoy their own form of legal autonomy. The bill thus gives cooperatives their own legal framework separate from (albeit in some aspects similar to) that governing commercial companies.
The bill ensures a difference between profit-making and non profit-making enterprises, and draws a distinction between surplus generated by a cooperative and company profits.
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