The Top 300 cooperatives invoice 2.17 billion dollars

The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) and the European Institute for Research on Cooperative and Social Companies (Euricse) published the eleventh edition of the World Cooperative Monitor, an annual report that studies the economic impact of cooperative companies on an international scale.

The monitor analyses the performance of the 300 largest cooperative organisations in the world that make up a business turnover of 2.7 billion American dollars. Additionally, it makes a classification by sectors based on the economic data from 2020, a ranking in which the set of organisations that support the Fundación Espriu holds the third place in the healthcare sector. In the general classification that orders all the cooperatives without differentiating them by their sector of activity, the Fundación Espriu may be found in position 206.

The research and the data collected every year for the preparation of the report provides the cooperative movement with a magnificent tool for evaluating its development, while at the same time allowing the relevance of the cooperative model to be transmitted to public opinion. It is also an important element in the dialogue with the public administrations and governments to promote the development of public policies that favour this business model.

In addition to economic and employment data, this year’s report includes a special report on digitalisation. Although the process was started up a few years ago, the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic have obviously speeded up the implantation of new technologies in most aspects of life, including education, work, consumption or healthcare. Companies have moved many everyday situations over to the digital environment. Cooperatives are no exception to this process, with the added challenge of “digitalising” the active and democratic participation of the cooperative members in the organisation’s decision-making processes.