CUA establishes revolving fund

THE Ghana Credit Unions Association (CUA) Limited has established a revolving fund under which GH¢600,000 has been disbursed to 75 credit unions in the country on a pilot basis.
Known as Micro Finance for the Active Poor, it is an innovative methodology to provide financial support for relatively poor members of rural community credit unions, especially women who are unable to access loans from credit unions due to the lack of collateral security.
The General Manager of CUA, Mr Emmanuel Oduro Darko, disclosed this to the Daily Graphic on the sidelines of this year’s International Credit Union Day which was held last Saturday in Koforidua in the Eastern Region.
It was on the theme, “My Credit Union - it belongs to me”.
The facility, which forms part of CUA’s new products and services, is expected to boost the financial standing of the hundreds of people under the credit union concept who, for financial difficulties, are unable to raise the needed capital to start their own businesses.
Mr Darko said the existence of CUA, which is a non-banking financial institution, had transformed the lives of its beneficiaries, mostly those in the rural areas and who, otherwise, could not have sourced loans from the banks.
He said to inculcate the culture of savings in the youth, school saving clubs were instituted six years ago, saying there were currently 36 of such clubs in second-cycle institutions and the Medical Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
“Fourteen thousand micro-saving boxes have also been distributed to societies throughout the country into which our clients will drop their daily savings, according to how much they can afford,” he said.
Touching on the products and services of CUA, he, among others, mentioned the institution of a central finance facility which provided opportunity for credit unions to lodge their statutory reserve fund, including investing a minimum of five per cent of their total assets in a central pool with loans granted from the facility to member societies for lending to their members.
Mr Oduro said as part of new initiatives, a proposal was made to develop a training centre for the credit union movement in the country, based on which the construction of a Credit Union Training Centre at Kasoa, scheduled for completion in June 2009, was ongoing.
He called on the government to expedite action on the Credit Union Bill which was currently before Parliament to enable CUA to operate to its fullest capacity.