Law on Savings and Credit Cooperatives (Caisses Populaires)

Savings and credit cooperatives, known in Haiti as caisses populaires, are the principal formal financial institutions reaching households outside the commercial banking system, and this law is their governing statute. It sets the conditions under which a cooperative is constituted, how it is organized, and the control and supervision regime applying to it and to federations of cooperatives. The law was enacted in the aftermath of the collapse of unregulated cooperative-style schemes that absorbed large volumes of household savings in Haiti around 2001-2002, and it should be read against that episode: the supervisory architecture it establishes was the state's response to a loss of savings that fell mainly on lower-income depositors. It is the reference text for later work on financial inclusion, microfinance regulation and the perimeter of central bank supervision. Published in Le Moniteur, 157th year, No. 54, Wednesday 10 July 2002, as an extraordinary issue.