The Philippine Constitution

and Cooperativesand Cooperatives

The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines contain provision recognizing cooperatives as legal personalities with economic and social functions and mandating the creation of an agency to promote their viability and growth for the good of the nation.

The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines contain provision recognizing cooperatives as legal personalities with economic and social functions and mandating the creation of an agency to promote their viability and growth for the good of the nation.

Sec. 1, paragraph 3, second sentence of Articles XII provides that “(p)rivate enterprises, including

corporations, cooperatives, and similar collective organizations shall be encourage to broaden their base of ownership.”

Sec. 6, second sentence of the same article states that “(i)ndividuals and private groups, including

corporations, cooperatives, and similar collective organizations shall have the right to own, establish, and operate economic enterprises, subject to the duty of the State to promote distributive justice and to intervene when the common good so demands. ”

Sec. 5 of Article XIII holds that “(t)he State shall recognized that right of farmers, farm workers,

and landowners, as well as cooperatives, and other independent farmers’ organizations to participate in the planning, organization, and management of the program, and shall provide support to agriculture through appropriate technology and research, and adequate financial, production, marketing, and other support services. ”

Mankind’s origin, existence, and survival stems from the ability of human being to work together for a common goal are it for physical safety, food, clothing, shelter, and all the calamities of a good life. So it has been since the dawn of Man until 20th century and will continue to be so into the future.

PerspectivePerspective

PerspectivePerspectiveThe art and science of working together or

“cooperation” has been applied in all fields of human endeavor; and history records the result which altogether point to its effectiveness in attaining preset objectives given full commitment by those concerned.

Over the centuries, and specifically the last two, cooperation assumed greater significance to individual human beings who belong to the middle and low income sectors of society, striving for better living condition in their lives.

PerspectivePerspective

Eventually, people banded together in informal groups to achieve common economic and social goals. Many of these groups gradually evolved into formal association now called cooperatives.

Cooperatives are an almost universal form of organization today found in practically all countries and used by people in many ways; to market food products, to purchase production supplies for farming and fishing, to provide housing – especially low-cost housing – to purchase family and household needs, to market the goods made by workers, farmers and craftsmen, to supply community services like electric power, or to provide various forms of protection like insurance or health services. There is no end to the ways in which the cooperative idea can be made to benefit people in their everyday needs in life.

Nature of Cooperatives Nature of Cooperatives

Certainly essential features are seen in all forms of cooperatives:

•They consist of groups of people who join together to do something they cannot very well to do as individuals.

•They aim to provide some services that is necessary or very desirable in their lives.

•They operate on the basis of self-help, that is, the people involved look to one another as a group for the solution of their problems.

•They do business motivate by service and not by profit.

Nature of Cooperatives Nature of Cooperatives

Former Director W.P. Watkins of the International Cooperative alliance, the world organization of cooperatives, defines Cooperation as a “system social organization based on the principles of unity, economy, democracy, equity and liberty.” (International Cooperative Alliance)

DefinitionDefinition

DefinitionDefinition

ART. 3. General Concepts. RA 9520 - A cooperative is an autonomous and duly registered association of persons, with a common bond of interest, who have voluntarily joined together to achieve their social, economic, and cultural needs and aspirations by making equitable contributions to the capital required, patronizing their products and services and accepting a fair share of the risks and benefits of the undertaking in accordance with universally accepted cooperative principles.

DefinitionDefinitionA widely-used definition of a cooperative is:

a business organization that is owned by those who use its services, the control of which rest equally with all its members, and the surplus earnings of which are divided among the members in proportion to the use they make of its services. This definition, however, should be expanded for it makes no mention of the social, educational and community values that are widely recognized and generally found in cooperative organizations.

It is sometimes easier to explain cooperatives by stating the objectives thus: They aim to provide goods services at cost.They aim eliminate unnecessary profits if middlemen in trade and commerce. They seek to prevent the exploitation of the weaker member of the society.They aim to protect the rights of people both as producers and consumers.They promote the mutual understanding and education among their members and, in the long run, among people in general.

The idea of greater unity and cohesion within the Cooperative Movement under various names – coordination, consolidation, concentration, integration – is gaining ground among Cooperators, for the most part as they come to realize that there most redoubtable competitors today are large-scale capitalistic concerns, vertically and horizontally integrated. There no grounds for thinking that this competition will diminish in severity. Rather price will tend to continue its evolution towards oligopoly and monopoly, not in national market only, but on the international plane in new multi-national economic units called free-trade areas or economic communities..

The competition which survives will not be the competition of the greater against the smaller, but the competition of the greater amongst themselves. The Cooperative Movement is potentially among the greatest. It needs only to concentrate its power in larger units by applying consistent without restriction, from the local to the international plane, the principle of cooperation among cooperatives, to make its greatness manifest and to act successfully against the monopolies.

In order that it shall do so, Cooperators must from time to time re-examine their practices and their institution in the light of their ultimate aims and the principles which serve these aims. It will be necessary to have a one-sided interpretation based on expediency in order to make clear the common ground on which Cooperators can come together and work together for the ideal of a better and more fully human society than mankind in the mass has yet achieved..

Such working together implies not merely the loyal collaboration, within their unions and federations, of cooperatives of any given type, but also closer and more helpful relations between cooperatives of different types of every level where this is practicable. The idea of a cooperative sector in the economic is too often an intellectual concept without a corresponding material reality, simply because of the lack of unity and cohesion between the different branches of the Movement.

The Cooperative Movement, when true to its principles and armed with the courage of its convictions, can prove to practical demonstration that a world society is possible in which man is no longer the slave but the master of economic forces. Its mission is to teach the common people by demonstration how the principles which express their neighborly and brotherly relations in their Cooperative can also inspire the mutual relations of the nations.

If the cooperative movement is to rise to its full structure, either within each country, or internationally, the several cooperative institutions must unreservedly support one another. They must act as members of a common united effort to realize the objectives and ideals of the movement as a whole. These are no less than the attainment of a stage at which conflict, monopoly and unearned profit cease to exist.

The ideal of the workers’ community such as the one envisaged by the Rochdale pioneers, or a cooperative commonwealth desired by several other cooperators, can hardly be realize in practice except by the generous and united efforts of all cooperators and cooperative institutions, large and small, national and international.

Cooperators the world over should profoundly appreciate that the most important aim of the cooperative movement is the promotion of the social and economic rights of the people and that the pursuit and achievement of this high aim requires active and concerted efforts towards the realization of the world peace.

The Philippine Cooperative Law, Annotated: Judge Manuel F. Verzosa, 1991Adriana Printing Company, Inc. Quezon City

Report of the ICA Commission on Cooperative Principles Reprinted by the Cooperative Foundation Philippines, Inc

RA 9520 The Philippine Cooperative Code of 2008

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