Cooperative

A cooperative is a partnership in which a group of people who are of the same class or have a similar relationship, such as neighbors, friends, relatives, or fellow citizens, come together to achieve common interests and, in fact, help each other. In this cooperative, they pool a certain amount of capital to provide housing, purchase necessities, or obtain credit and loans, and collectively solve the problem.
In fact, the members of the company together create a small community that, for example, in the procurement of goods needed by the members, by collecting the small amount of money that each member pays, buys the goods needed by the members first hand and sells them to the members at the same cost price or at a very small profit. In this way, unnecessary intermediaries in business and trade and the owners of such false businesses are eliminated.
From the perspective of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Islamic Revolution shattered a monarchical political structure and replaced it with democracy; this revolution removed a puppet system that was humiliated by the powers that be and replaced it with an independent system that relied on national dignity.
Production Cooperative Company: A company that operates in order to engage in matters related to agriculture, animal husbandry, livestock breeding, fish farming and fishing, fisheries, industry, mining, urban, rural, nomadic development, and the like, and collectively manages a production unit therein.
Therefore, due to the people-centered framework of the Islamic Republic system, the economic movement and growth of this system must also be people-centered. The Leader of the Revolution had previously repeatedly emphasized the importance of "people's participation" in production and the economy, but the slogan of 1403 specifically emphasized the place of the people in the economic system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Cooperatives are undoubtedly one of the desirable models for growing production with public participation. By coordinating production and distribution processes, cooperatives can contribute to greater efficiency in the use of resources and reduce costs.
The Leader of the Revolution believes that cooperatives are a very desirable phenomenon for the Iranian economy; they collect small capital, empower each individual, and create abundant employment; then if these cooperatives can be networked, gathered into a network, a huge complex will be created.
Service cooperatives with about eighteen thousand, agricultural cooperatives with approximately fifteen thousand, industrial cooperatives with eleven thousand, and housing cooperatives with ten thousand constitute the largest number of cooperatives in Iran. Iran, with about one hundred thousand registered cooperatives, is the first country in the world in this ranking, and the United States is in second place with about forty thousand registered cooperatives.
However, the cooperative sector's share of job creation is 1.85 million job opportunities; meaning that 9 percent of the country's total employment is in the cooperative sector.
Another problem faced by cooperatives is the issue of financing. These companies generally start with small contributions from their members. In the current situation, it is not possible for a company to grow without access to sustainable financing sources. One of the criticisms of cooperative owners is the lack of trust in them by the banking system.
One of the main reasons for the growth of the cooperative sector is to create and strengthen the culture of cooperation. The culture of cooperation must be institutionalized as a national thought and value in the minds of all members of society. Another necessity for the growth of the cooperative sector is to identify and support leading cooperatives - as the locomotive of the entire cooperative sector.
It is also essential that policies supporting and removing obstacles to the development of cooperatives be placed within a single framework and a common legal package. In addition to aligning laws and cooperatives, the country's executive agencies - such as relevant ministries - need to have a common plan for the development of cooperatives under their jurisdiction. This will prevent parallel work and increase the success rate in achieving goals.

translator: fatemeh abbaszadeh.