Abstract: Savings and credit cooperative societies have been present in Rwanda for decades, but this sector has not been able to impact positively on the lives of people. Access to finance has been cited as one of the factors hampering economic growth and poverty alleviations. Savings and credit cooperative societies have lagged behind other financial institutions by performing below the members’ expectations therefore causing dissatisfaction among the members. The main reason for this research is to fill a gap left by other researchers by way of critically analyzing the factors influencing the performance and growth of SACCOs. Based on the evaluation there is a gap literature to warrant a study to be conducted in this industry. This is what prompted the researcher to carry out a study to investigate the determinants of financial performance on growth of SACCOs in Gasabo District.The target population of this study was drawn from Umurenge SACCOs in Gasabo District, Managers, branch staff and SACCO members. Umurenge SACCO in Gasabo District has 15 branches and each branch has one manager within their respective administrative sectors. These entire branch Saccos have the total managers of 15 managers in all the 15 branches, 105 staffs and 32,100 members from which a sample was drawn. A sample size of 172 respondents which consist of 4 Managers, 8 staffs and 160 SACCOS members was considered and drawn only from the four SACCOs located in rural areas such as Jabana Sacco, Kinyinya Sacco, Bumbogo Sacco and Kozigundu Sacco in which the respondents have been interviewed. Stratified sampling and simple random sampling were used. A Likert scale questionnaire was used to gather primary information while a secondary data collection sheet was used for collecting secondary information regarding SACCO performance. Information was sorted, coded and put into the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 for production of graphs, tables, descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics. The results have been indicated that whether there was a positive relationship between financial performance determinants and growth of SACCOs notably in the corners of return on investments, saving culture, investment policy and interest rates. The data collection instruments were questionnaires for primary data and on the other hand, the company reports were deeply consulted, for secondary data. The type of validity used by the researcher for this study was the content validity. For the reliability of the data collection instrument, Test- retest reliability has been used. It was a measure of reliability obtained by administering the same test twice over a period of time to a group of individuals. The findings guided the researcher after analyzing data, to assess the influence of financial performance determinants on growth of savings and credit cooperative societies in Rwanda.
Keywords: Financial Performance, Return on investment, Interest rate, Investment policies, Profitability and SACCO financial performance.
Title: THE INFLUENCE OF FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE DETERMINANTS ON GROWTH OF SAVINGS AND CREDITS COOPERATIVES SOCIETIES IN RWANDA: A CASE STUDY OF UMURENGE SACCOs IN GASABO DISTRICT
Author: Uwitonze Pascasie, Dr. Patrick Mulyungi
International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations
ISSN 2348-7585 (Online)
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