Cooperativism and Microcredit: an analysis of the participation of cooperatives in the supply of microcredit in Brazil

Abstract

This study analyzes the participation of Brazilian credit unions in the provision of microcredit in the period from 2017 to 2019. The cooperatives belonging to the four main cooperative credit systems in the country were considered: Cresol, Sicoob, Sicredi and Unicred. To meet the proposed objective, a documentary research was carried out as from the survey of secondary data from official agencies, in addition to data from the financial and accounting reports of the analyzed institutions. The literature consulted points out that credit unions have a greater incentive to carry out solidarity credit and microcredit operations, given their social nature. The results presented evidence that the microcredit offer by the analyzed cooperative systems is not very significant, representing, on average, less than 10% of the total microcredit portfolio in the analyzed years. The main conclusion is that most Brazilian credit unions, with the exception of those that compose the solidarity segment, have not had a significant participation in the supply of microcredit. It is hoped that these findings can contribute to the development of policies capable of changing this picture, that is, that these institutions, considered by the literature as the ideal model of organization to operate microcredit, can potentialize actions towards a greater insertion in the supply of microcredit.

Efficacy of the Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia Microcredit Scheme in Elevating the Income of the B40 Group

“…The microcredit programme under the Grameen Bank Project was designed to provide small loans to groups of poor women to create income-generating self-employment through micro-entrepreneurship. This group is based on solidarity group lending, whereby every member of the group is responsible for the repayment of the other members (Santos et al, 2022). This project has achieved remarkable success in helping poor women to move out from poverty.…”