Microfinance Campesina in Ecuador

The project has been active since 2002 and is based on direct cooperation between Federcasse, on behalf of the Italian Cooperative Credit and Cooperative Codesarrollo-Desarrollo de los Pueblos (a part of the FEPP-Fund Ecuadorian Populorum Progressio, which combines more than 800 small scattered village banks in the Andes) resulted in an agreement for cultural and financial cooperation signed in 2002 and renewed in October 2012, during the ninth edition of the "Mission of the Cooperative Credit in Ecuador." To date about 220 mutual banks have made available to Codesarrollo a plafond of nearly $ 35 million for loans on concessional terms (4-5%), benefiting over 150,000 families of campesinos and related activities. The loans to Codesarrollo are generally disbursed by a pool of coordinated local federations. Each pool is assigned to a specific goal: the establishment of a loan fund of new branches, projects, marketing and export of high quality food products, development of the territories of the border areas of Ecuador, entrepreneurship, family, youth and women purchase and legalization of land by the campesinos and in favor of the indigenous people who inhabit the Amazon forests of Ecuador, construction of new buildings, development of renewable energy.