Guyana’s outdated credit union legislation flagged for modernisation

Last Updated on Monday, 16 March 2026, 18:21 by Writer

Top officials of the Caribbean’s credit union sector formally opened their periodic Caribbean Development Education (CaribDE) premier training programme for the first time in Guyana with a call for the country’s cooperative sector laws to be revamped.

The call was issued by Programme Director of CaribDE, Melvin Edwards who noted that the 1948 Cooperative Societies Act was outdated.

For instance, he said the legislation did not take into account financial crimes. “So basically an almost 80-year-old piece of legislation cannot be relevant to the present day. With the tremendous changes in standards, anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing proliferation, the international financial reporting standards, IFRS…credit union standards for prudential management, these need to be built in, they need to be embedded in the legislation,” he told the opening of the seminar at the Four Points by Sheraton, Heroes Highway.

Mr Edwards appealed to labour minister Keoma Griffith to work with the local and regional credit union movements, as well as CaribDE, to modernize Guyana’s legislative framework of the cooperative sector at a time when most Caribbean nations have already modernised their laws. 

In response, Mr Griffith said Guyana has been receiving technical assistance from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to conduct an “extensive review” of the Cooperative Societies Act.

The aims, he said, would strengthen the law, improve governance structures and ensure greater accountability across the sector so that the cooperative movement could operate effectively within Guyana’s rapidly evolving economic landscape.

In addition to taking up CaribDE’s offer, he also said Guyana was studying Jamaica’s cooperatives legislation.

“We will continue to look at and examine all of the models and the development that has taken place in a legislative way to see how we can better serve the people of Guyana through the legislation,” said Mr Griffith who is also an attorney-at-law.

Mr Griffith also registered the Guyana government’s concerns that segments of the cooperative sector were not being properly run.

He urged that those long-standing governance and accountability challenges be addressed. “In some instances, cooperative societies have operated in ways that have undermined public confidence and weakened the effectiveness of the movement,” he added.

The CaribDE Programme Director said the Caribbean credit union movement caters for 2.8 million persons across the region who have amassed US$3.5 billion.

“The point is ordinary people have been owning and building these credit unions, leading them, governing them, and managing them successfully to the point that it is causing quite a stir in the traditional for-profit banking sector. We don’t apologize for that,” he added.

Mr Edwards also urged that there be unity in Guyana’s cooperative credit union movement.

He appealed to Secretary of the Guyana Cooperative Credit Union League, Colin Beaton and Chairman of the Guyana Public Service Cooperative Credit Union Ltd, Trevor Benn in the presence of their colleagues to mend their differences before the Caribbean Confederation of Credit Unions (CCCU) 2026 International Convention and Annual General Meeting scheduled for June 19–24 in Barbados.

“So again, Mr. Beaton, again Chairman Ben, I appeal to you in the presence of our colleagues that whatever differences there are, we would like to see, we hope to see a united, unified Guyana movement. There will always be disagreements. I don’t believe a movement that is splintered for younger leaders to take over. So I plead with you, whatever the difference is, don’t go back to CCCU in Barbados in June as a splintered movement. I speak plain English, okay? That is the call of leadership,” the CaribDE Programme Director urged.

Mr Benn did not address the call for and end to the squabbling, but sought to assure attendees that the aim was to improve the credit union.

He also boasted of his credit union’s membership growth. “We have made that our mantra, to make the organisation better than we left it. We’ve made it better in that we have grown as a membership, an active member at this important juncture,” he said.

Mr Beaton said the Vice President of the League and Brother Thompson had been working to “resolve our little teething issues” about which the Caribbean was aware. “I trust by the next Caribbean forum, it will be resolved,” he said.