Cooperatives in practice the challenges and opportunities. Florian Grohs, Director Loans and Investments, Oikocredit

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1 Cooperatives in practice the challenges and opportunities Florian Grohs, Director Loans and Investments, Oikocredit Utrecht, Let me tell you how I got involved with cooperatives. In the mid 90ies I worked for the World Bank in Washington and one of our tasks was to accompany the land reform that was taking place after the break-up of the Soviet Union. The large collective farms were broken up and small farmers received on average 1.7 ha / Person. The land is fertile, vineyards and orchards, but how should they farm? They needed seeds, fertilizer, agricultural equipment and had no money. Banks could not and did not want to give microloans. In 1996 the Government and the World Bank started a rural finance project, which after long discussions came to the conclusion to start rural savings and credit cooperatives in the villages and through these cooperatives to provide the much needed finance to the small farmers. Savings first, then loans? It did not work! The World Bank team received a grant, in fact from the Dutch Government and a consultant and I started to visit villages, speak to the farmers, we explained how a credit cooperative works, asked for some financial contribution from the farmers. Then we gave out a loan of USD to six village cooperatives for one year, signed a contract of two pages, shook hands and we were absolutely not sure if we would see that money again. But it worked. The Associations gave out short term loans ranging from EUR only to members, and charged market interest rates. We also followed a couple of principles. There was a maximum of one SCA per village, the members should capitalize the cooperative over time, the village cooperatives received training on how to run a cooperative and the Government also created a law and an agency to supervise and regulate these SCAs. Today, the cooperatives are still working. There are more than 400 cooperatives with members, giving out small loans, starting to collect savings.

2 This picture shows the chairman of the cooperative in the village of Gura Bicului, an average cooperative with 340 members. One of the secrets of their success is that they have simple administration, the administrative costs per SCA are only 5,700 per year which results in a competitive interest rate for their members. The farmer lady Nadejda Gori uses the loan for her green house to grow vegetables. Elements for success are: Simple, Democratic, women participation, low cost, local knowledge, social pressure for repayment. But they also have weaknesses and not all of the SCAs have survived the 2008 financial crisis. Now things are progressing - the law on these SCAs is being revised, also to allow for mergers between different cooperatives. But why did I tell you this story? It shows that cooperatives can be a very good tool to help disadvantaged people unite if they have a common interest that can be served through a cooperative. In this case the people united because they needed access to small loans to build up their micro businesses. I was convinced that cooperatives are a good idea and started to work for DZ BANK, a large German cooperative bank for several years. But the development aspect was missing and therefore I joined Oikocredit some 10 years ago. Oikocredit is an ecumenical development finance cooperative, which was initiated by the World Council of Churches to not give grants but provide loans to disadvantaged people in developing countries. Today, Oikocredit is financially strong and has 595 members from all over the world, and a very active member participation. Especially in the beginning years, most of the loans financed by Oikocredit went to cooperatives. And even today one third of our nearly 900 project partners are cooperatives, well distributed over the different continents. The bulk of our cooperative partners are savings and credit cooperatives similar to the ones in Moldova, but we also finance many coffee producer cooperatives in Latin America, a transport cooperative in Senegal or other forms. Another success story I would like to present is an agricultural cooperative in Arica, called Githunguri from Kenya. The Githunguri Dairy Farmers Cooperative was started by 31 farmers in 1961 in Kenya. They started with a simple milk collection center, which you can also find in the Swiss Alps. After twenty years they wanted to progress and developed plans to set up own milk processing plant (from 1992). This process took a while but finally in 2004 they commissioned a processing plant. They had a very simple goal, and wanted to provide fresh milk in simle plastic bags (no Tetra Pack) at low prices to urban consumers in and around Nairobi. Why did Oikocredit get involved? The cooperative was not able to get funding from commercial banks, they showed a strong commitment together the farmers had already constructed buildings, they had good governance and their plans were socially relevant

3 15,000 farmers Job creation Target market Access to affordable pasteurized milk Oikocredit provided them loans of 1.5 Mio for purchase of processing equipment and, very important, also provided capacity building. This consisted of initial guidance on the business plan together with local consultants, managerial and board level technical support, and also a lot of support to ensure high quality. There was also an interesting cooperation between Oikocredit and a Dutch Rotary District to provide farmer training an dairy farming and build up model farms. In these pictures you see how some of the farms looked like before the Githunguri Dairy Cooperative became successful, and how with the technical support from Oikocredit and Rotary, these farms, with a simple construction, were modernized. Nowadays Githunguri is successful. They had rapid growth 3 rd in market share in Nairobi, the farmers benefit, and they expanded their membership to farmers, the have a considerably turn-over and created many jobs. There are a number of success factors I would like to point out: They are fully owned by farmers and have a visionary leadership, consisting of a competent chairman of the board and management. One cannot enough point out the importance of good governance for the success of cooperatives. Githunguri did not only receive finance but also capacity building from or facilitated by Oikocredit. Also very important is to improve the quality of the raw milk is training for farmers on dairy production and milk quality. We now see Githunguri with a laughing and a crying eye. It is a great success and through strong cooperation simple small farmers have achieved what seemed impossible, joining forces to not only produce but also process and market the milk to achieve a higher income for their families. Unfortunately for Oikocredit, their financing needs have grown out of our reach, and they cooperate just with that bank that rejected them in the beginning. But that is our role. But unfortunately not all the cooperatives we finance are success stories. We have therefore looked at the number of cooperatives we financed that failed and compare them with our other project partners that have a different legal form, for instance as a limited liability company. Our analysis showed that cooperatives are just within the average. They do not succeed more often, but also do not fail more often than other legal entities (with the exception of banks, that are much more stable). In this slide you can see some of the strengths and weaknesses:

4 They are democratic, but vulnerable to strong vested interests. Sometimes in a savings and credit cooperative a small group of influential members receiving large loans can negatively influence a large group of small savers. Cooperatives are open and voluntary, as we have seen in Moldova, but often management and board lack professional skills. This can lead to fraud cases as we have recently seen in Tanzania in two small cooperatives. As we know well within Oikocredit, decisions are taken in a very participatory way, involving the members. But more participation also means slower decisions. Another clear advantage especially in remote rural places is their low cost structure also made possible through voluntary engagement of their members. But when it comes to collecting savings, then it is necessary to also supervise and regulate cooperatives to protect the savings of the members. There is a century old debate if cooperatives can actually contribute meaningfully to development and the discussion varies between total over-estimation and absolute failure. Both schools can find many examples to support their theory. But if we look at it pragmatically there are a couple of attributes we in Oikocredit are trying to follow. - Developed over many years - Oriented towards members - Solid management - Localy rooted - Part of a network - Local people need their own model - State should only create the legal framework Let me end my presentation, with a quote from Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen one of the founding fathers of the cooperative movement from The Cooperatives as means to remedy the distress of the rural population as well as of the urban craftsmen and workers We at Oikocredit continue to believe in the idea that cooperatives are a very good way to foster selfhelp especially for disadvantaged people and promote sustainable development. Cooperatives are member-owned and very often have a development goal. They want to meet the needs of their members. However we should always respect that cooperatives are a business that have to be able to compete in the market and can therefore fail. Therefore our financial and capacity building support should be aimed at improving not harming their situation. Thank you very much.

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