First day Nepal Study Tour visit to The Netherlands
17-01-2018This week, 15 guests from Nepal are visiting The Netherlands for a study tour: 3 representatives of our cooperative clients in Nepal, 11 representatives from the Ministry of Cooperative and Poverty Alleviation (MoCPA), Ministry of Finance (MoF), Department of Cooperatives, Central Cooperative Training Center, GIZ INCLUDE and Cooperative Movements in Nepal, and Agriterra business advisor Trijan Singh. The main reason for their visit is to obtain insights and inspiration on how to use the recently endorsed new Cooperative Act for the benefit of the cooperative movement in Nepal.
Richard van der Maden
​business advisor Agriterra
After a relaxing day in Rotterdam, with a boat tour in the Rotterdam harbour and a visit to the Market Hall, today we officially started the study tour. The opening was done by Cees van Rij on behalf of Agriterra in the Open Air Museum in Arnhem, where he explained that the Dutch economy is built on agriculture, and that our agricultural sector is built on strong cooperatives. We were proud to have Mr Sudhi Bhattarai from the Embassy of Nepal in Brussels as our guest during the morning program.
In the afternoon we travelled to Houten, where the group met with Arjen van Nuland, director of the National Cooperative Council (NCR). The group was amazed about the facts he shared with us: the biggest cooperative in The Netherlands (Achmea) has 10 million members, and our country has 25 million cooperative membership, although we only have 17 million inhabitants! NCR has 110 members, who cover together 90% of the Dutch cooperative turnover. In total, the 2,500 active cooperatives in The Netherlands are good for 18% of the GDP (in Nepal 3%). We had a very vibrant discussion on the role of the government, member commitment, the different governance models, and the NCR Code of Conduct. Also striking: half of the cooperatives in The Netherlands, have been founded in the last 10 year. This brings a lot of challenges and dilemmas for the two generations: ‘traditional’ cooperatives versus new generation cooperatives. We concluded the first day of our study tour with a good advice of the NCR director: education is the key element in cooperatives, who need to continuously improve themselves.
