Honduras

There are more than 2,500 savings and credit cooperatives (SCC), and production and service cooperatives in the country, which contribute around 5% to the country’s GDP. There are secondary institutions, such as FACACH, the national SCC federation, to which 88 SCC with around 850,000 members are affiliated. Amongst these members are more than 50% women mainly from rural areas and many MSMEs. Furthermore, in FACACH there are also young members (14-25 years according to the UN definition) of cooperatives, they are organized in committees and to work with as a project´s target group,

The project’s activities in FACACH aim to improve the economic and political representation of the affiliated SCC and its members in order to make the sector more visible in legal initiatives and public funding programs in the future. In addition, the association is responsible for further training and human resource capability building within SCCs, which is to be better structured and systematized by setting up a training system. Furthermore, the project’s activities seek to expand, and qualitatively improve the administrative, financial, and institutional advice, including affiliated companies through consulting, training and the use of management tools. At the same time, a concept for sustainable financial products should be developed and implemented, which specifically promotes sustainable entrepreneurial initiatives, particularly for MSME-members.

The supervisory body CONSUCOOP has taken over the supervisory role for SCC since 2016, when the cooperative sector’s regulation was reformed. The review and improvement of prudential standards, the supervisory model and the supervisory processes were addressed last year as part of a structured advisory program and are to be continued.