January 1st, 2025
Happy new year Cooperative members.
Today, we mark the end of 2024 with celebrating an unprecedented achievement as the only non-institutional financing cooperative in Cross River State. At the beginning of the year 2024, we set for ourselves the target, to grow to 200 active cooperative members, which we have achieved. We improve our financing by introducing separate Thrift Savings Accounts and commencing the sales of Shares to members. Our effective Thrift and lending policy led to 100% loan recovery rate; delivering 10% interest on Thrift Savings and 33% Dividends on Shares to our members.
Remarkable as our success for the year has been, we also had some challenges that we are working hard to overcome. Low capitalization constrained the commencement of our Produce Store, which we plan to start in July 2024. The percentage of valid loan applications we could respond to stood at 65%, not a significant change from 2023.
We are not done with these aspirations as the year 2025 offers even more prospect for higher performance. We will introduce Block Thrift, an additional savings product that offers members 18% instant interest for any amount of money they save on this account for 12 months duration. We will endeavor to access grants – retain more money and increase the percentage of valid loan applications we satisfy. We will introduce Team Produce Storage (TPS), where a group of members can access loan to together store specific produce in a given tenure and pay back with a percentage of the profit at the market rate.
We further will strengthen our efficiency; the management will continue to deploy online tools to enhance member self-service experience and give members more control in the management of their stakes with the Cooperative. Within the first quarter of the year, the Cooperative will optimize its Website; this will be an additional measure to increase transparency and greater accountability of management to members. These efforts will translate to more referrals and visibility that will help turn around the fortunes of Cooperative.
I wish to commend all members for the show of uncommon resilience by staying up to date with their thrift payments despite the daunting economic challenges we went through in Nigeria for the year 2024. Your courage and commitment led to the success we are celebrating today and we look forward to similar zeal and interest in 2025.
Once again, I wish you a happy and prosperous new year
Signed
President
