QUESTION OF THE DAY
After experimenting with many loan schemes to finance individual women enterprises or producers at high interest rates by micro finance institutions, without any success a new cooperative framework is being proposed to give loans to group of women.
It should be clear that such a cooperative lending scheme will only work if it is linked to family farms or group of family farms being given production credit to buy seeds, fertiliser and appropriate farming implements to engage in large scale farming and pay back after selling their crops without any interest charges. These family farms would then be linked to a cooperative of processers of agricultural produce with loans to purchase appropriate milling machines to process and sell value added agricultural products and to pay back their loans without interest. They would also be linked to a cooperative of vendors of processed agricultural products who would also be given loans to establish their storage facilities, refrigerators and other distribution facilities to market produce and pay back their loans without interest.
Such a non- parasitic cooperative value added chain would ensure and enhance sustainable prosperity band development
