Members of the Board of the Guyana Cooperative Credit Union League (GCCUL) concede that credit unions in Guyana have seen better times. Indeed, time was when the cooperative enjoyed much greater national prominence. The now defunct Guyana National Cooperative Bank served as a flagship for the cooperative movement amidst a flotilla of smaller ‘vessels’ that included modest entrepreneurial ventures managed by groups that had banded themselves together at the urging of a political administration committed to ensuring that the cooperative sector became dominant in the economy.
That never happened and while it would be far from accurate to suggest that the cooperative movement has failed in Guyana, what is undoubtedly true is that it has gone through ‘the wars’ – so to speak – and has emerged jaded and weakened. The collapse of the Guyana National Cooperative Bank was perhaps the most visible failure of the movement,
