BUJUMBURA August 19th (ABP) – The Director General (DG) of the National Communal Investment Fund (FONIC), Mr. Servillen Nitunga, presented on Tuesday August 17, 2021, in Bujumbura, the evaluation report of the village cooperatives “Sangwe” in order to see the step taken by those cooperatives in the use of the credits granted to them, a check on the site by ABP has revealed.
It was during a working meeting organized by the Ministry of the Interior, Community Development and Public Security which brought together all the provincial governors.
In an interview with the media, the DG of FONIC indicated that some cooperatives have performed well during the year 2019-2020 and show satisfactory results, while others have failed.
Among the success factors, Mr. Nitunga spoke of the leadership of competent cooperators, the involvement of the communal administration for monitoring, and the support of decentralized technical services. In addition, regions favorable to certain crops and a vision shared and understood in the same way by the cooperative members are other factors of success, he said.
Referring to the case of cooperatives that have experienced failure, Mr. Nitunga attributes this to the lack of a common vision by the members of the cooperatives, to the vagaries of the weather and to the plague for livestock. Another factor of failure is the identification of activities compatible with the environment, he stressed.
However, Mr. Nintunga said that FONIC has developed strategies for the recovery of cooperatives that have failed, that is, those with between zero and five million Burundian francs. Those strategies will help them to plan their projects well.
There are cooperatives which have been very successful and which show results of up to 80,000,000 BIF, indicated the DG of FONIC who, at the same time, congratulated the government of Burundi which initiated the project of cooperatives whose success is estimated at 62%.
Indeed, the Burundian government launched the cooperative project with an investment of 29 billion Burundian francs, said Mr. Nitunga, specifying that those cooperatives now have a financial heritage of 33 billion BIF, that is to say a profit of four billion Burundian francs.