Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth – Buoyed by rapid growth over the past 24 years, the St Elizabeth Co-operative Credit Union recently opened its fifth office. Located at the Pines Plaza in the fast-growing town of Junction, the new credit union branch houses four employees and provides services for people in southern St Elizabeth.

“We have always identified the south (south St Elizabeth) as an area we want to move into and we feel this is the right time,” the co-op’s general manager, Fitz Rowe, told the Observer.

The St Elizabeth Co-op, which boasts 26,000 members, has its headquarters in Santa Cruz, and in addition to Junction has branch offices in Black River, Appleton and Siloah.

Launched in 1972, the St Elizabeth Co-op had a slow start, building an asset base of just $300,000 in the first 10 years. But it has grown rapidly since then, and as of December 2005 assets stood at $579 million.

Rowe, who says the co-op grew by 20 per cent last year, identified careful planning as the underlying cause for the expansion of the organisation.

“The Elizabeth Credit Union is always in a planning mode. Each year we plan what we are going to do for the future.” said Rowe. “We certainly took off after we started what I would call strategic planning sessions in ’82 and then we started to make out annual plans. We have had tremendous growth from that period until now.”

The co-op general manager said the development of small businesses remained the focus of his organisation.

“The business activity that is most predominant now is people getting into taxis, operating small businesses, people want to run small supermarkets, groceries, agricultural developments (farms). We would love to see more people going into farming,” said Rowe.

“We are also encouraging young people to get into micro enterprise development. Persons can get into projects to employ one to five persons along with themselves and that area is moving also.,” he said.

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