by Curlan Campbell
- Productive and financial co-operatives governed by Co-operative Societies Act, 2011
- Government will take examples from Cuba to craft legislation
- Review of existing Act would enable co-operatives to invest in stocks and shares
A new era beckons for Co-operatives involved in the production and manufacturing sectors, as the government looks to enact new legislation to govern and improve its legal and operational framework. At present, productive and financial co-operatives are governed under the Co-operative Societies Act, 2011, which provides for the establishment, registration, management, operation and dissolution of co-operative societies in Grenada.
However, according to the Minister for Co-operatives Lennox Andrews, the Act is not best suited to reflect co-operatives’ nature and unique characteristics within the productive sector.
Minister Andrews, in a recent public engagement, initially shared his vision to have co-operatives not limited to financial services but extended to productive co-operatives. He indicated that part of the review of the Co-operative Societies Act would enable co-operatives to invest in stocks and shares presently restrictive in the existing legislation.
However, Minister Andrews stated that the matter was raised with the Grenada Authority for the Regulation of Financial Institutions (GARFIN), tasked with designing entirely new legislation.
“The idea is that we have one co-operative society act that governs the functioning operations of the national co-operatives and the productive co-operatives. Obviously, the productive co-operatives are qualitatively different from the financial corporations. Therefore, much of what is applied to the financial co-operative does not apply to the productive co-operative. Hence, there is no need for a separate act to be developed to deal specifically with the productive co-operative,” Minister Andrews explained.
He raised concerns with the co-operative regulator, GARFIN, and tasked them to develop a new design that will better reflect the nature of the productive co-operatives, as “Rules and regulations and guidelines that govern financial co-operatives. It just didn’t work for them.” Minister Andrews stated that drafting new legislation will take some time to develop and that the government will take examples from Cuba to craft legislation that best suits our economy.
“The productive corporate sector was seen as the second most important sector after the state sector. They are involved in the production of goods and the production of services, mainly agricultural goods, but many of them are involved in the manufacturing of products. And I’m saying that if we can get a sense of how Cuba goes about managing these productive co-operatives, then we can piggyback on that and design the Act to suit our own needs. Of course, will take some time. first of all, there has to be a commitment was getting done. Of course, I am committed to getting done, and then we need to have the expertise to be dedicated to this task because this is highly technical work,” he said.
Executive Director of GARFIN Denis Felix confirmed via email that “GARFIN is spearheading work to revise the existing Co-operative Societies Act and Regulations which, in part, maintains provision for dual regulators as presently obtains. However, ideally, our preference is for development of separate legislation for credit unions and productive co-operatives in the future.”