the cooperative societies play a vital role in providing foodstuffs, but there is no effective control over their activities because the responsibility for supervision is shared between the ministries of commerce and industry and social affairs, and as a result more often than not there is a conflict of competency.
although such coops are the largest agency in storing and selling foodstuffs, and despite the fact that their founding philosophy lies in providing the best service to the people of the region, most of them compete for seats of the national assembly, for personal benefit, and to employ relatives and affiliates from their sect or tribe, and to work to achieve maximum profits and brag about it.
there is no doubt that global inflationary pressures have finally appeared faster than expected, and that the journey of the product from the country of manufacture to the display shelf includes port expenses, customs duties, customs clearance, transportation, and the already high cost of storage, which many demands to raise higher level which ultimately reflects in the price of each item that the consumer needs, and much more.
the ministry of commerce has no choice but to recommend the immediate or gradual liberalization of prices while fixing the prices of limited commodities, otherwise, we are faced with two options, either raising prices or cutting off commodities.
despite what the ministries of commerce and social affairs sometimes show in terms of apparent toughness with cooperative societies, their role in raising prices is clear and significant and is due in a dangerous part to the corruption of many of their boards of directors, the low level of some members’ academic and moral standards, and the modest capabilities of many of their higher administrations, and the good evidence for this is the successive ministerial decisions that did not stop for a year, since half a century ago, to dissolve the boards of dozens of cooperatives, some every two or three years, and then opt for parachute appointments to members of the boards of some of them, and treat them like ‘shops’, especially for the officials.
many people know that coops contribute to high prices, because the boards of directors of the vast majority of the work to achieve profits, whether to prove their efficiency or for political or social purposes, and thus the success of a cooperative in achieving huge profits is not evidence of the quality of management, but rather the opposite, it may be that these profits are a result of some or all of the following, which all contribute to rising prices:
1 - insisting on requesting free items from the supplier.
2 - insisting on obtaining large discounts on goods supplied for the first time.
3 - the supplier shall bear the cost of the materials that are damaged inside stores as a result of negligence.
4 - the unjustified delay in the payment of the supplier’s dues, and this includes almost all cooperatives, and this prompts some major suppliers to resort to financing companies that purchase their bills with a high support rate, to collect them from the coops by their own methods.
5 - increasing the fees and rents of the association’s branches, and the demand for large non-refundable money in advance which accompanies the sharing of this money by some members of the board, and many know the truth of this matter.
and since the supplier is not a charity society, he often places all these unjustified costs on his goods, because he is not willing to sell at a loss, and thus the prices of many goods and materials inflate as a result of the coop’s corruption and its desire to achieve the highest profits, and this is not one of its tasks or the purposes of its establishment.
the ideal cooperative is the one that provides the best services to the community, not the one that achieves the highest financial surpluses.