KYIV. Oct 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched a project to credit small and medium-sized farmers and agricultural companies in rural areas in Ukraine via credit unions. The project will be implemented from 2016 until 2020.
“We hope that in four year we will be able to attract up to 24,000 new borrowers in agriculture. We want to make it thanks to cooperation with at least 68 credit unions,” Project Manager Eva Serzhynska said at a roundtable devoted to the International Day of Credit Unions in Kyiv on Wednesday.
She said that the project will be implemented in tight cooperation with the regulator, associations of credit unions and credit unions.
Head of projects and programs at the strategy and reform department of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Olena Onyschuk said that the first step in reforming the Ukrainian credit union market must be amendments to legislation. The central bank is actively working on a new bill on credit cooperation and some other documents, in particular, resolutions of the national commission for financial service markets regulation and a bill amending taxation.
“No one can fill the niche of credit unions, as this is the space for credit cooperation for poor people and for places where there is no possibility to open a bank – rural areas and small towns,” she said.
USAID will finance the project and the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) will implement it.
As reported, USAID’s Development Credit Authority (DCA) first started cooperating with Ukrainian credit unions in 2014. Then USAID jointly with five unions started implementing an eight-year program to support Ukrainian farmers in Lviv, Kherson and Kharkiv regions. The following credit unions participate in the program: Anisiya (Lviv), Vyhoda (Lviv region), Hromada, Narodna Dovira (Kherson), and Kharkiv Kasa Vzayemodopomohy (Kharkiv).
