New lawmaker represents cooperatives in House

The House of Representatives has a new member whose entry into the legislative realm could boost the agriculture and cooperatives sectors in the country.

Jose Ping-ay, a farmer-leader and true-blue cooperatives man, was sworn in by Speaker Prospero Nograles during the resumption of session last week after the Christmas break. He hit the ground running.

In an interview with The STAR, Ping-ay vowed to introduce legislation that would put more teeth on the Cooperatives Development Authority (CDA) to make it effective in supervi-sing the operation of the burgeoning volume of cooperatives throughout the country.

“We have to give ample power to the CDA to police the cooperatives,” he asserted.

He disclosed that there are 22,000 functional cooperatives spread out around the country but only half of them are “alive and kicking”.

Ping-ay is moving for the merging of weak cooperatives. “We want to empower the CDA, we want the agency to rationalize our cooperatives,” he said when asked about his congressional agenda.

He said cooperatives play a vital rolet in agricultural development and in spurring economic activities in the countryside.

The neophyte solon knows whereof he speaks. He has been in the cooperative movement since l987. He is the chairman of the National Confederation of Cooperatives Network (NATCCO). Before that, he was the head of the Northern Luzon Association of Cooperatives.

He now represents the network’s party list arm Coop-Natcco in Congress. Coop Natcco’s second nominee, he  succeeded the late Rep. Guillermo Cua of Cagayan de Oro who died last December.

The party list group with its nationwide membership has consistently garnered one congressional seat since 2001.

A civil engineer by profession Ping-ay who is from Sta. Cruz, Ilocos Sur, made his mark in the national cooperative movement after steering the Sta. Cruz Agricultural Cooperative which he chairs into a a P236 million enterprise with five branches, a far cry from its petty status when it began in l984 with P5,000 capital.

He wants the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to privilege cooperative banks with easier access to capital funds saying the coop banks are owned by various cooperative groups that relend the funds to their members.

He said that this would trigger greater productivity in the rural areas and cushion the impact of the global economic meltdown.