The Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority has been called upon to bring down levies charged for rural saccos.
Githunguri dairy cooperative sacco treasurer Gabriel Kige while speaking during the 19th annual general meeting said rural saccos depend on agriculture or farming and seasons are unpredictable.
"Sometimes nobody is sure what will happen during the season and rural saccos members are mostly farmers," Kige said.
"There can be diseases if a member is a livestock farmer and this is where the farmers derive their income."
The treasurer said members struggle if their animals die especially if it is a big number causing the number of loan defaulters to rise.
"As a sacco, when we are reading the financial statements, those people who have defaulted are many. In the case of our sacco it is over 500 million," Kige said.
He said the investor is denied a higher dividend and SASRA should treat rural and urban saccos separately when charging levies, recommending that they charge rural saccos less.
The sacco CEO Charles Kioko said the shareholders utilised the products and services well.
He said this enabled the sacco to provide steady long term returns on their investments through a consistent dividend distribution.
"Despite a challenging year 2021, our sacco is providing handsome returns to the investors by rewarding them with a healthy payout of Sh131 million," Kioko said.
"This will be a return of 12 per cent dividend and six per cent interest on member deposits."
This year, members will be paid Sh30,665,648 dividends up from Sh20,959,214 in year 2020.
Interest on member deposits of Sh101,054,675 for year ended 2021 was an improvement from Sh72,953,213 in year 2020.
The sacco chairman Joseph Mburu announced that total gross turnover stood at Sh420,197,542 as at the year ended 2021 from Sh317,245,275 million in year 2020 making an increase of Sh40,634,951.
The sacco had total assets of Sh3,589,966,637 up from Sh2,877,392,853 an increase of Sh712,573785 which makes 25 per cent.
It also increased its membership to 26,697 from 23,349 in year 2020 an increase of 3,348 members.
Members deposited Sh2,653,459,791 in year 2021 from Sh2,142,632,549 in year 2020 an increase of Sh510,827,243 which is 24 per cent.
The members took loans of Sh3,096,134,098 up from Sh2,352,498,058 in year 2020.
The share capital or FOSA shares stood at 255,547,069 up from 209,592,139.
This year members will be paid Sh30,665,648 dividends up from Sh20,959,214 in year 2020 and interest on member deposit of Sh101,054,675 for year ended 2021 from Sh72,953,213 in year 2020.
