AN ANALYSIS OF TECHNICAL – FINANCIAL EFFICIENCY AND BENEFITS OF COLLECTIVE ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION: A CASE STUDY OF THE ROTATION RICE-SHRIMP MODEL IN SOC TRANG PROVINCE

The forms of collective economic production organizations (CEPOs) are increasingly encouraged, especially for small-scale producers. The study was carried out from March to July 2021 through interviews with 45 riceshrimp farming households, including 25 households belonging to the CEPOs and 20 individual households in the Soc Trang Province aiming to evaluate the financial performance of the model. The research results show that the farming scale of the CEPOs’ households is larger; the stocking density is lower; but the yield is higher than that of the counterparts (591.5 kg shrimp and 6.36 ton of rice/ha/crop, compared to 385.1 kg of shrimpand 4,23 ton of rice/ha/crop, respecitively). There are no statistically significant differences in the cost indicators, but the indicators of financial performance of the CEPOs’ households are statistically significantly higher than that of individual households (profit reaching 45.9 mill.VND for shrimp and 54.1 mill.VND/ha/crop for rice, double that of individual households). Shrimp CEPOs play an important role in gathering production through input sumply contracts, technical support, preferential policies on capital and contributing to job creation and income enhancement for shrimp farming household.