VENEZUELA > Survey of community banks and SUCRE

Time: 3 months, two in Venezuela (May and June 2011)

We continue our mission on SUCRE (see mission in Ecuador) and meet Venezuelan protagonists such as Manuel Cerezal, an economist on a mission for the Government of Venezuela.

We begin our work on the project Palmas (see mission in Brazil). The model of the Palmas community banks was born in Brazil and then introduced in Venezuela; there are almost 4600 of them. Commissioned by the Palmas Institute and the first Secretary of the Embassy of Venezuela in Paris, we meet them in order to do a qualitative study.

We try to understand  the functioning and the impact of de community banks’ network in Venezuela, as we aim at comparing it to the Palmas model. The community banks in Venezuela have been launched on Government’s initiative (reason that explains the large number of them), whereas the Palmas model banks from Brazil have been launched by the communities themselves.

Our mission was to also bring the actors of the two models (Venezuelan and Brazilian) closer together and thus to enable exchanges of their mutual experiences, best practices, contracts and know-how.

Our contact:

Farid Fernandez, first Secretary of the Venezuelan Embassy, Paris

Manuel Cerezal, SUCRE designer, Caracas

Also discover our missions in Uruguay, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil.