Speaking on Saturday during the Annual General Meeting for Chitukuko SACCO in Blantyre, MUSCCO Technical Services and Compliance Manager, Marko Nkhoma, said SACCOs need to explore new ways for survival amid harsh operating environment of COVID 19 pandemic.

“We believe merging of SACCOS is essential as it will increase membership, total assets and economies of scale,” said Nkhoma.

He thinks this will eventually give SACCOs more power in terms of negotiations for growth especially this time when COVID 19 has hit hard the operations of Saccos in Malawi.

The MUSCCO Technical and Compliance Manager then asked companies and organizations that effect deductions on employees’ salaries to remit the money to SACCOs in time.

Chitukuko SACCO President, Peter Muona, said his organization made a profit of 42.5 million kwacha in 2020, despite the harsh working environment of Covid 19.

“We stopped offering long term loans and offered the short-term ones to make sure that members have money for their use. This was one of our strategies that helped us to post this profit. It’s not a small achievement especially that were heavily hit by the COVID 19,” explained Muona.

Chitukuko SACCO has a membership of about 3,000 people.