Participants in the meeting agreed on the need to promulgate the modified Cooperative Law to remove some weaknesses in the existing Cooperative Law.

The modified draft law comprised nine chapters of 58 articles, a 34-articles increase over the current law. The draft law has new contents such as clearer definition of the nature and organization of cooperatives, people who join cooperatives, and some stipulations on finance of cooperatives and federation of cooperatives.

Members of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly also agreed that cooperatives’ distribution of profits must be based on contributions made by each cooperative member. The rest will be divided between cooperative members according to their levels of usage of cooperatives’ services.

In addition, they proposed the idea that distribution should be made in various forms, including the pooling of capital, properties and land.

An issue that received many contrary ideas is if a cooperative could set up a company or buy shares of other enterprises.