Augusto Costa Leads 2nd Provincial Forum of Cooperatives on the Move in Bahía Blanca Port

The Minister of Production, Science and Technological Innovation of the province of Buenos Aires, Augusto Costa, headed the 2nd Provincial Forum of Cooperatives on the Move developed in the Bahía Blanca Port. Within the framework of the meeting in which 500 cooperative members from different districts of the Province participated, the head of the area that promotes the initiative highlighted that The previous administration “ignored and stigmatized” the cooperative movement and that the current government “works side by side” with the sector”.

“Buenos Aires is the province that brings together the largest number of cooperatives in Argentina and yet, in the previous administration there was not a single relevant provincial public policy for the development of cooperativism, but rather the opposite, it was a neglected and stigmatized sector,” Costa highlighted. And in that line, he detailed that “In the Province there are 6,145 cooperatives: each of them is a productive actor that generates work, inclusion and economic activity.” And he valued: “We believe that the Buenos Aires cooperative movement is an example of development.”

During his speech at the Port of Bahía Blanca, the Minister of Production recalled that upon assuming “the first thing the governor told us Axel Kicillof “It was ‘I want to see a Provincial State working side by side with the entire cooperative movement.'” In this framework, he highlighted the impact of provincial programs for the sector developed in its management, such as Cooperative Integration Projects, Bacoope Credits, Cooperative Impulse, Recognition of Cooperative or Reactive Quality.

He schedule of activities of which they participated 500 cooperative representatives from different Buenos Aires municipalities, included discussion tables with proposals such as “Production and self-managed work”, “Territorial development and habitat construction”, “Cooperative integration strategies” and “Food production and marketing”, as well as a cooperative fair and stands institutional, in addition to the central panel “Public policies for the development of Buenos Aires cooperativism.”

During the day, the Buenos Aires minister signed the public deed that lifts the mortgage that weighed on the Textiles Pigüé Ltda Work Cooperativeformed in 2004 by the former workers of the Gatic company and asserted: “We have a present State that builds production, work and development policies with the different productive sectors in the 135 municipalities.”

Costa signed an agreement for $60 million for infrastructure works in the Bahía Blanca Industrial Park

“To promote the Buenos Aires industry, Governor Kicillof launched the #ArribaParques program, which between 2021 and 2022 financed works worth $600 million in 23 Buenos Aires industrial parks. And this year he plans to add works in another 14 parks, with subsidies of $1,080 million,” the official detailed on his Twitter account.

“Industrial clusters are at the center of the Province’s productive policy, because they generate work and boost production,” he highlighted while assessing: “They are investments that become employment and local development in the different municipalitiesencouraging the establishment of companies and making them more competitive.”