Financial experts from leading cooperative banks met in Brussels last week to discuss agricooperatives’
access to finance and risk assessment. They concluded that agribusiness in general and agri-cooperatives in particular are well-placed to weather the current financial crisis, due to their business model being based on credibility, stability and a low-risk approach.
Speaking at the end of this high-level meeting, Cogeca President Gert Van Dijk said that “European agri-cooperatives have already ‘tightened their belts’, but they still remain beacons of financial stability overall. Cooperative banks in particular, due to their direct and longestablished links with agri-cooperatives, are keeping up much of their lending activity in
agriculture even as credit is becoming increasingly scarce.”

At the meeting, a joint expert group was also set up between Cogeca and the European Association of Cooperative Banks (EACB) to develop appropriate financial indicators to assess risk and improve credit access for agri-cooperatives.

For further information, please contact:
Prodromos Kalaitzis
Senior Policy Advisor
Tel.: +32 2 287 27 81
prodromos.kalaitzis@copa-cogeca.eu
Simon Michel-Berger
Press Officer
Mobile: + 32 474 840 836
simon.michel-berger@copa-cogeca.eu