In the previous issue, our partner in this column, Atty. Franco G. Bawang, Jr. had shared about growing your money in the cooperative and the Ponzi scheme. In addition, Michelle and Jimmy Astudillo Jr. in their column entitled “Wealth Investing” found in the opposite page of this paper had elaborately discussed on this topic.
In our desire to provide additional information on where to put your money, allow me to share some data related to cooperative investments. It is of public knowledge that government owned and controlled corporations, insurance companies, and authorized private entities offer opportunities for investments to the public.
Moreover, cooperatives classify investments as short-term or long term. Investments of cooperatives can be in the form of mutual funds, stock shares, share capital in cooperative banks, federations, cooperative insurance and other non-marketable equity securities offered by various financial institutions.
As I am still beginning to learn the field of wealth creation and investment, I leave the matter to our experts who had been in the business for quite some time. I shall only share some figures that were generated from the reports of registered cooperatives.
Data gathered from consolidated reports of CDA-CAR indicated that cooperatives had a total investment of about P 702 million. Kalinga Province registered the highest data on investment at P 268.61million followed by Baguio, P216.6 million; Mountain Province, P 81.26 million; Benguet, P 69.8 million; Abra, P 38 million; Ifugao, P 27.38 million and Apayao, P 461 thousand.
Such figure indicates the cooperatives have adopted measures to participate in nation-building through participation in financial service delivery to members and the community. Likewise, investments of all types of cooperatives in mutual funds, non-marketable equity shares and other forms connects the resources of the people to the formal and sophisticated financial system of the country and the world. With the increasing trend of cooperative sectors’ involvement in wealth investing, the possibility of having cooperatives as preferred business model can be realized.
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I heard information that some individuals are affected by the latest advisory of the Securities and Exchange Commission on a firm offering investment opportunities to the public without authority from the Commission. We join the SEC in informing the public on the presence of some individuals using cooperatives as fronts to advance their personal agenda. We recommend that before investing in cooperatives make sure that they are legitimate and are still operating.
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May I take this opportunity to inform all registered cooperatives that the on-line submission of Cooperative Annual Progress Report had started last April 6, 2015. You may log at www.cda.gov.ph and follow the instructions provided in submitting your CAPR to CDA.