Mamohlakola Letuka
BOLIBA Savings and Credit this week marked its 17th anniversary in style, with the multi-purpose cooperative society celebrating the milestone with a new premises and slogan.
According to Boliba Savings and Credit General Manager Phethang Mpota, the new slogan “The Nation’s Hope for Economic Growth” heralded the cooperative society’s new quest to increase its role in fostering Lesotho’s development.
Boliba Savings and Credit was founded in 2000 by some local businessmen and some former Lesotho Bank employees who were laid off when Standard Bank Lesotho took over Lesotho Bank. It commenced its operations at the Basotho Enterprise Development Corporation (BEDCO) premises on 26 June 2001.
Having started off with a staff complement of four people, Boliba Savings and Credit now employs 80 people in branches stationed in Leribe, Mohales-Hoek and Maseru.
Its mandate is to cater for the savings and credit needs of its members and other Basotho in general. Some of the cooperative society’s clients include small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs), societies, and low income workers from both the public and private sectors.
Mr Mpota said the cooperative society had used the slogan “The People’s Alternative” since it was established in 2000 because they expected to only cater for people who had been rejected by commercial banks.
“It was the people’s alternative because we expected clients who had been rejected by other financial institutions, or those who were not satisfied with the services they had got,” he said.
“Changing the slogan symbolises the different direction the cooperative is now taking, which is to build the nation’s economy.”
Mr Mpota also explained that they decided to build their own premises out of the realisation that renting office space was more costly in the long run.
“We realised that continuing to pay rent negatively affected our growth as a company and decided to own our own space,” he said.
To fully serve their 64 000 clients, Mr Mpota said Boliba Savings and Credit had a long-term plan of transforming and improving its operations through technology.
He said they would soon establish an automated teller machine (ATM) service “since the world has now become digitalised”.
Narrating Boliba Savings and Credit’s journey, its Deputy Chairperson Lebohang Motsoane said it was a product of the Boliba Multi-Purpose Cooperative that was formed by retrenched Lesotho Bank employees with a vision to provide for their families.
“We started operating in a small office at BEDCO. And that office is now used by our agency to show how small it is,” she said, adding that they later moved to a larger bigger office at Metcash building.
On behalf of the cooperative society’s clients, Poloko Masithela said the new strategy of fostering economic growth through the promotion of agriculture was going to benefit many people since most Basotho depended on agriculture for their livelihoods.
“The agricultural strategy is going to be beneficial to us as Basotho because we are farmers. With this initiative, agriculture will finally be commercialised,” Mr Masithela said.
“Boliba is the answer to fostering economic development of the lowest-placed people to the highest peaks through their strategies.”
