Treasury Management for SACCOs: Procedure Guidelines and Training Manual

This document is the result of a visit to Uganda by the author to offer consultancy services in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded rural Savings Promotion and Enhancement of Enterprise Development (SPEED) program. The document focuses on treasury management practices within the rural Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) and aims to assemble essential elements of treasury management that are relevant and appropriate for the stage of development and the material context that SACCOs operate in. The author states that:

• The treasury management for SACCOs essentially amounts to liquidity management combined with some elements of credit portfolio risk measurement;
• Interest rate risk concerns are negligible, as the loan portfolio is short-term and can re-price frequently;
• On the liability side, SACCOs operate primarily with member capital and member sight deposits at minimal and contractually variable interest cost, as well as with small amounts of variable-rate and typically subsidized funding for special-purpose loan products.

In response to practical treasury-related issues that the SACCOs raised, the document includes sections on internal control and cash handling procedures, practical governance concerns and some comments on staff retention and rotation. As per the author, the guidelines are designed as a practical toolkit and training document that should be useful for SACCO management and elected treasury officials in reviewing the basic elements of treasury in a SACCO environment.