Cooperatives must diversify activities, boost socio-economy - Wan Junaidi

KUALA LUMPUR: The cooperative sector in Malaysia, which will be a century-old next year, needs to expand its wings in various sectors of the economy, including company shareholding and construction.

Entrepreneur and Cooperative Development Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, appearing on Bernama TV's 'Ruang Bicara' programme last night, said the sector needed to diversify its activities apart from services such as tourism and credit loans.

"Involvement in new activities can ensure that the cooperative is able to face changes with time. To enable cooperatives to engage in various new activities, several changes and amendments in cooperative rules may need to be made," he said.

"In the current scenario, the cooperative sector is too focused on the service sector such as tourism, hotels and homestays, causing most of the cooperatives to be affected by the implementation of movement restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

Only cooperatives involved with credit loans were not affected as they deal heavily with government employees who have fixed incomes, he added.

Wan Junaidi said currently, there are 14,000 cooperatives nationwide with more than six million members.

However, he added that there are also cooperatives that are not active and this situation needs to be improved so that cooperatives become a platform in the socio-economic development of the community.

-- BERNAMA