Within the scope of its duties, it is the responsibility of Cooperativa António Sérgio para a Economia Social (CASES), and with regard to the Cooperative Sector, “to collect the elements concerning cooperatives or organizations in the cooperative sector that allow to keep all the elements that refer to them updated, namely, those related to their constitution, the amendment of statutes, the activities carried out, the annual management and account reports”(under the terms of article 4, paragraph 4, point e), of the Decree-Law no. 39/2017, of April 4th).
Following compliance with that responsibility, the present work, entitled “Top 100 Cooperatives – 2018”, results from part of the 2018 information collected through CASES Accreditation Portal, continuing a practice that was resumed in 2018 with the publication of the 2017 ranking.
In this sense, similar to the editorial line of the previous study, this publication aims to disclose the most relevant statistical data relating to the Top 100 Portuguese Cooperatives ordered by Turnover and the Top 20 Credit Cooperatives ordered by the total of Net Assets. The Top 5 Cooperatives by branch are also presented, among which are some Cooperatives that, following the criteria chosen for the purpose of the report, do not belong to the Top 100 list, but whose presentation allows a concrete view of the diversity and richness of the Cooperative Sector.
Comparing to the 2017 list, this new study also sought to present more detailed and analytical information, including new indicators, a new section dedicated to some of the main economic and financial ratios and some comparisons with the previous year.
Another novelty was the inclusion of indicators that seek to capture the contribution of these Cooperatives to some of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in particular to SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth, represented in this study by the participation of women and young people in employment and by the type of contract between Cooperatives and employees. At the same time, the contribution to SDG 5 – Gender Equality was also observed through the female participation in governing bodies.
With this report, CASES intends to continue to provide statistical information on the Cooperative Sector to managers, co-operators and workers of the sector, to researchers who work on the topic and to the general public.
