The information was transmitted by the Secretary of State for the Economy, Mário Caetano João, guaranteeing that "there are conditions to finance more agricultural cooperatives" to "meet the need to revive cooperativism" in the country.
The Ministry of Economy and Planning and UNACA - Confederation of Peasants' and Agricultural Cooperatives' Associations of Angola signed this Friday a memorandum of understanding to "facilitate the exercise of logistics activities" in the agricultural sector to cooperatives.
One of the memorandum's foundations is to facilitate the logistics activities of agricultural cooperatives that have benefited from support in the process of granting credit, with a view to enhancing the collection, selection, packaging, conservation and distribution of products.
The memorandum was signed by the Ministry of Economy and Planning, the Secretary of State Mário Caetano João, and by UNACA its president, Albano da Silva Lussati.
Mário Caetano João considered, on the occasion, that the memorandum "will help to improve the logistics chain that the cooperatives provide to their partners not only from the point of view of distribution, from the countryside to the city, but also upstream with the support to be provided in the preparation of the soils, in the provision of seeds".
"This memorandum has a strong component that is training and, being the cooperatives our target public, we know that we would not be able to achieve good results if it were not for a very intense cooperation with UNACA," he stressed.
Albano da Silva Lussati considered the memorandum a "very important step" for the cooperative movement in the country, at a time when the confederation has 2089 cooperatives legalized and "many with acceptable organizational level".
The president of UNACA pointed out the importance of the memorandum, which appears in the selection of 270 cooperatives and the need to increase the number of cooperatives to be financed under Prodesi (Programme of Support to Production, Diversification of Exports and Import Substitution).
"We are to be congratulated because around 27 per cent of what the Government has recommended for the cooperatives until 2020 has been fulfilled", he underlined.
The Ministry of Economy and Planning and UNACA will develop and implement "strategic partnerships" with the agro-food industry, promoting synergies in the value chain, which will strengthen the negotiating capacity, "including the use of sustainable mechanisms to obtain credit for peasants".
