Parliament urged to speed up passage of new co-operative law

Mr Emmanuel Oduro Darko, the General Manager of Ghana Co-operative Credit Union Association (CUA), has appealed to parliament to speed up action on the passage of a bill to ensure effective regulation and management of credit unions.

He said this at a two-day international workshop on “Graduating Microfinance in Credit Union Operations” on Thursday at Kasoa in the Central region.

Thirty participants from Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Gambia, Southern Sudan and Ireland attended the workshop.

He said the new non-banking Financial Institutions Act 774 which had not been passed by Parliament for 10 years was hampering the work of Credit Unions, adding that the law would see to the modification of the credit unions to enhance efficiency regulation and make them more accessible to many Ghanaians.

The new law would also curb people escaping with clients’ savings, adding that the existing Co-operative Law 252 of 1968 is totally outdated and could collapse non banking institutions.

He said credit unions had made significant impact on the lives of Ghanaians in education, health, housing and small scale enterprises and needed assistance from government to improve.

He said in Kenya, due to modification of their cooperative laws, credit unions contributed 42 per cent of their national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Mr Patrick Fay, Board Chairman of International Development Foundation Limited in Ireland, also appealed to the government to update co-operative laws to enable credit unions to play their expected roles towards building the economy.

Mr Fay said with the support of the government of Ireland, over 3 million out of the 6. 5 million population of the country are members of credit unions.

He called on the CUA to come out with good policies and programmes that would help to build capacity of managements and staffs of credit unions.

Mr Fay said as a result of sound management of Credit Unions in Ireland, substantial financial supports have been given to some countries in West Africa including Ghana to undertake development projects.