Rural Cooperative Strategies and Pilot Demonstrations
- Country – Russian Federation
- Donor - TACIS
- Duration – 36 months
- Status – completed
Tacis funded project to promote the start-up of rural savings and credit co-operatives in selected oblasts of Russia. Support and advise the MoAF in developing and expanding the legal basis and organisational and economic strategies to promote farm credit through credit co-operatives. Assistance and training to staff of relevant institutions in providing adequate services to rural credit co-operatives. Development of a national rural credit co-operatives' network.
The project has achieve tangible and sustainable results:
- 70 new credit co-operatives have been founded
- three regional co-operatives have been founded
- the credit co-operative framework law has been prepared and accepted by the Duma
- 3500 members of credit co-operatives have been trained
- training centres have been designed and established
- a 30 min film on development of credit cooperation in Russia has been made and distributed
- a range of instruction guidelines, manuals and books have been elaborated
Specific activities implemented under the project included:
- Establishment of credit and saving co-operatives in pilot regions
- Support to existing co-operative financial institutions on local and oblast levels (first and second level credit and saving co-operatives)
- Elaboration and set-up of a functioning auditing system for the credit co-operatives
- Assistance to the credit co-operatives in set-up of financial management procedures, including accounting and monitoring of loans
- Training of staff of the co-operatives in credit assessment and supervision, processing of loan applications and loan monitoring
- Dissemination of the information and experience via mass media, manuals, TV stations, press releases and radio
