Page 12 - Ramco JO SACCOStar _Vol 50.indd
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SACCO INDUSTRY WATCH
COMMISSIONER for
CO-OPERATIVES
speaks on SACCO
SECTOR outlook
Mr Geo?rey Njang’ombe, Acting County level. We have also trained in Murang’a, Kakamega,
Commissioner for Co-operative Kisii and Kisumu.
Development, speaks to SACCO Star
Editor Ngumbo Njoroge on the sector This will enable the sub-County officers who normally do
outlook in 2020. the promotion of co-operatives and tackle new applications,
to handle the application.
In this interview, the Commissioner addresses topical
issues in the SACCO sector such as technology, policy Other aspects which we are going to include later after
and regulations, taxation, central liquidity facility and the training will be the filing of wealth declaration forms,
governance. annual returns and audited accounts. From this, we’ll be
able to extract certified and correct information regarding
In a recent Annual General Meeting, you mentioned that co-operatives.
the State Department for Co-operatives is in the process of
digitizing its data to provide e?cient services to SACCOs. Speak on the progress in the establishment of a central
Speak on the progress of this. liquidity facility for SACCOs as proposed by President
Uhuru Kenyatta to enable SACCOs to participate in the
Already we have a system called Co-operative Information national payment system
Management System in place. It was launched by the
Cabinet Secretary but we had not fully implemented it. There is quite good ground which has been covered through
SASRA. There are so many models which can be used to
The objective of this is to digitise services rendered to come up with this central liquidity facility. We can have an
Co-operatives, mainly on registration because that is our independent body doing it, you can also have a wholesale
key mandate as the National Government. We receive SACCO pooling together.
applications online so that people do not have to travel from
all over the country for this. We have had a lot of problems The benefits to SACCOs would be that there are SACCOs
even in disbursing what we have already registered. which are more liquid, some even have excess money,
while others have less. It will work just like the Central Bank
We started with the piloting in Nairobi because most of where we have central clearing and you can have overnight
our applications are received from Nairobi. We trained lending to other SACCOs or a lender of last resort.
the officers in Nairobi on how to receive and load the
applications online. We realised that it was also not very I would say that it is not very different from what we have at
efficient so we have rolled out a countrywide training KUSCCO with the Central Finance Fund bridging the gap to
where we are targeting 300 co-operative officers at the sub- SACCOs. It is a facility where, in case SACCOs need money,
they can borrow from the fund. That organisation can be
at KUSCCO or any other place but we don’t expect it to
10 | SACCO Star Magazine
