The ICA welcomes a number of new and returning members this month.
The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) from India and the National Cooperatives Association of South Africa (NCASA) have joined as new Full Members.
The National Cooperative Union of Turkiye (TURKIYEKOOP) from Turkiye is returning as a Full Member, while the Instituto de Desarrollo y Crédito Cooperativo (IDECOOP) from the Dominican Republic is returning as an Associate Member.
NABARD is an Indian state-owned government agency which provides credit, policy support, and development initiatives to strengthen agriculture, rural infrastructure and cooperative institutions. With 3,015 employees NABARD provides refinance to 34 state cooperative banks and 351 district central cooperative banks who in turn lend to various credit and non-credit cooperative societies, which collectively have a membership base of 290 million.
NCASA is a national federation of South African co-ops, including tertiary cooperatives and national secondary cooperatives. Employing 30 staff members, NCASA has 6,490 individual members and 8 direct member organisations.
TURKIYEKOOP, who was previously an ICA member from 2000 to 2020, reactivated their membership in May this year. TURKIYEKOOP represents co-ops in the agriculture, fishing, credit, consumption, housing, transportation and service sectors in official and private studies on cooperatives. It also carries out lobbying activities, studies on increasing cooperative awareness, and sharing information on the development of the international cooperative movement with its members, which is made up of 6,791 cooperatives with a total of 692,475 individual members.
IDECOOP from the Dominican Republic was also previously a member of the ICA from 2005 to 2018, and has rejoined as an Associate Member. IDECOOP is an autonomous state organisation which works to promote, educate, introduce technology to and oversee the cooperative movement at the national level.
The ICA now has 319 member organisations from 106 countries, of which 277 are Full Members and 42 are Associate Members.
