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Last update : November 2006
Background
Oikocredit was founded in 1975 at the initiative of the World Council of Churches to
provide churches and church-related organizations with an investment tool aimed at
supporting marginalized people in the third world.
The mission of Oikocredit is formulated as follows: Oikocredit, as a worldwide cooperative
society, promotes global justice by challenging people, churches and others to share their
resources through socially responsible investments and by empowering disadvantaged people
with credit.
The objective of Oikocredit is to make the mobilized resources available to cooperatives
or groups of marginalized people in order to further finance their income-generating
activities.
Structure
Oikocredit is a cooperative society under Dutch law. Oikocredit has its
statutory office in Amersfoort and is registered at the Gooi and Eemlanden
Chamber of Commerce in Amersfoort.
The 12 members of the Board are elected and dismissed by the General
Meeting. The Board takes (final) responsibility for all aspects of the
administration of Oikocredit. The Board may delegate its power to a managing
Director, who is responsible for the day-to-day management of Oikocredit.
The operational organization of Oikocredit consists of regional offices
(Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the Philippines, India, Costa
Rica, Uruguay, Peru, Germany and the Netherlands), country offices
(Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Cambodgia, Indonesia, Benin, Tanzania, Senegal, Uganda, Mali,
Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakian Republic, Ukraine) and an International Support
Office (ISO) in Amersfoort, the Netherlands.
Activities
Oikocredit's primary activity is to make funding available to viable economic enterprises undertaken by economically disadvantaged groups of people in developing countries.
Funding by Oikocredit mainly takes the form of loans (90%), with an
average loan repayment period of 5.5 years.
Equity investments (9.6%) and guarantees (0.4%) account for the remaining
funding. Most funding is in US dollars (49%) and euro (25%). The remainder
(26%)is in local currency.
The range loan size is between 50,000 and 2 million euros (4 million euros
in exceptional cases). The interest rates on both our hard and our local
currency loans are flexible, taking into consideration: market rate, project
and country risks, development relevance and cost coverage.
Key figures
The active project portfolio of Oikocredit amounted to 467 projects in about 50 countries for a total of 163 million euro at 31 December 2005.
| IDES | 2001 |
2002 |
2003 | 2004 | 2005 |
| Members |
523 |
545 |
554 | 571 | 582 |
| Staff | 78 | 86 | 89 | 101 | 122 |
| Projects in the portfolio | 307 | 343 | 362 | 398 | 467 |
| Regional offices | 12 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 |
