SACCOS a boost in Zims economy

Tanaka Sigudu

The Minister of Women Affairs , Community , Small and Medium Enterprise has commended the Africa Confederation of Cooperative Savings and Credit Associations (ACCOSCA) for providing financial stability to communities which have no access to mainstream financial services.

In a speech read on her behalf by the Permanent Secretary in hte ministry Moses Mhike , Minister of Women , Affairs , Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development , Dr Sithembiso Nyoni , said ACCOSCA was contributing to the realisation of Vision 2030 through access to funding.

“Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) play a significant role in providing access to finance to the group members who would otherwise not be able to access financial services from main stream institutions for several reasons including lack of collateral , lack of disposable income to save and invest and stringent bank requirements to access formal banking sector services. SACCOs indeed contribute immensely to the national vision of ebcoming an upper middle class economy by 2030 ” , he said .

ACCOSCA Chief Executive officer , George Ombadi said it was important that women and youths be Empowered in Corporate savings and Credit association through digital technologies .

“We need to see that the women and young people are involved in empowerment that has been going on in the African continent of financial inclusion , financial access which is technology so we hope that we are going to address issues around using technology to enhace financial inclusion and the risk associated with technology such as cyber crime , cyber security and the main objective for that is that we as ACCOSCA we believe coperatives have a right to be involved to empower people in communal areas.”

Meanwhile Registrar of Cooperatives Socities of Zimbabwe , Thabani Shoko , bemoaned the high cost of audit fees as a stambling block on the development of the associations.

“You also find the burden of audit has been high on some of the cooperatives the audit fees are to high that was anothe rproblem facing coperatives. Some of the coperatives were failing to carry out these audits and their argument is always the high cost of auditing. Government is also trying to intervene and see how auditing can be carried out through governments assistance such that we quickly notice were embezzlement of funds is occuring ” , said Shoko

The comments were raised at the ACCOSCA Forum in Victoria Falls which was attended by 14 member countries namely Germany, Canada, Tanzania, Ghana, Eswatini, Botswana, Zambia, USA, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe.