TOKYO, Mar. 26 – Japan Co-operative Alliance (JCA) released its first official statistics on co-op business in Japan on March 26, 2020. According to the statistics, the total amount of the value added by the cooperatives in Japan was approximately 5.6 trillion yen. It accounts for 1.9% of the sum of the value added by all domestic industries. The total number of cooperative association members is 15.61 million, and each household is estimated to have memberships in 1.8 associations. JCA will continue releasing the statistics in the future as one of the means to exhibit the broad presence of cooperative associations in Japan.
The base figures for the statistics are provided by the public offices and the cooperative associations, and the current JCA statistics used the numbers of the fiscal year 2017.
The added-value is calculated in the nation’s economic census by subtracting costs and expenses from corporate profits as indicators to show how much added-value is created in each business. JCA aggregated the value added in each business sector, such as purchasing, sales, credit, and mutual aid programs on the same terms. The sales generated in the cooperative business was 33.85 trillion yen, which accounts for 2.1% of the sales of all domestic industries. Based on this number, JCA calculated that the value added by cooperative associations was 5.56 trillion yen.
The JCA data also confirmed a high contribution of the co-ops in terms of local employment and social infrastructure. The cooperatives employ 572,904 full-time workers, which account for 1.5% of the number of all full-time domestic workers. There are 35,949 facilities for the cooperative union members, such as head offices, sales outlets, gas stations, and medical and welfare facilities.
The supply of daily items by the cooperatives was 4.4 trillion yen in total. That includes 2.69 trillion yen or 6% of retail food sales in Japan.
In the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries industry, the contribution of the cooperatives was significant. The supply of production material was 2.12 trillion yen, and 90% of them were provided via agricultural cooperatives. Agriculture, forestry, and fisheries-related sales were 6.17 trillion yen. It accounted for 54.5% of the 11.33 trillion yen, the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries output. The volume of credit and mutual aid service output was also shown in the statistics.
“So far, our promotional activities relayed heavily on case studies, but the figures can explain the contribution of cooperatives in the society more objectively,” JCA said. “The presence of cooperatives was once again demonstrated by the number of members and the size of the business.”