Current State and Development Prospects of Cooperative Legislation in Armenia

Agriculture plays a substantial role in the economy of Armenia. After the collapse of Soviet Union Armenia faced many problems and challenges. The breakdown of relationships of farms with input suppliers and output markets,... [ view full abstract ]

Agriculture plays a substantial role in the economy of Armenia. After the collapse of Soviet Union Armenia faced many problems and challenges. The breakdown of relationships of farms with input suppliers and output markets, poorly conducted restructuring and privatization created widespread problems especially in the Armenian agriculture. Many of these problems are still apparent in the country. From the problems widespread in the agricultural sector of Armenia it was obvious that development of agriculture and related fields highly depends on creation and successful development of agricultural cooperatives. Since the independence of Armenia, many international and state programs were initiated to promote cooperative movement in Armenia. However, because of vague understanding of true cooperative identity and cooperative principles among farmers, lack of participation of farmers in economic activity of cooperatives, lack of cooperative laws and misunderstanding of cooperative legal elements, many cooperatives stayed on paper mostly relying on donor support.
In this paper the authors study the legal dimension of problems preventing cooperative development. The existing cooperative laws in Armenia do not completely recognize the true cooperative identity and principles. Legal reforms, although being very necessary but not enough, will have essential importance for understanding the cooperative identity and developing the cooperative movement in Armenia. The authors highlight the legal analysis conducted in Armenia in 2013 and 2014 for the sake of contributing to the efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Armenia and other interested stakeholders in the process of conducting reforms and improvements in the field of cooperative legislation.