The Vietnam Cooperative Alliance (VCA) was established in October 1993 by the unification of the Central Union of Handicraft & Industry cooperative and Vietnam Management Board of Supply & Marketing cooperatives in order to represent and protect the rights and interest of cooperatives, cooperative federations and members, who voluntarily participate in building and developing the cooperative economy in Vietnam. By October 2018, there are 21,212 cooperatives, more than 93,000 pre-cooperatives and nearly 60 cooperatives federations operating in various sectors of the economy: agriculture (12,799 cooperatives), industry & small handicraft (2,176 cooperatives), trading and services (1,829 cooperatives), transportation (1,319 cooperatives), credit (1,182 cooperatives), environment (461 cooperatives), construction (874 cooperatives), others (572 cooperatives)... with the participation of nearly 13 million members and 30 million workers. The cooperative alliance has been establishing in all 63 provinces and cities throughout Vietnam.
In the period of 2018-2020 and the years onward, Vietnam Cooperative Alliance sets priorities to promote the international cooperation relations in and out of Vietnam, with special emphasis on economic cooperation among cooperatives in Vietnam and in other countries, international organizations and economic groups in order to exchange the national and international experiences on cooperative development, to search and mobilize the resources for implementing the solutions to improve the governance capacities, increase the scale, productivity, quality and efficiency of the cooperative activities, to promote investment activities, set up cooperative models linking to the value chains; to provide services regarding consultation, training, retraining & vocational training, especially support the cooperative model of business start-up; providing services on trade promotion, science & technology promotion, IT, finance, credit, cooperative auduting... in order to contribute to the social-economic development of the country.
