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The purpose of this paper is to analyse performance (on efficiency) of agricultural cooperatives in Mpumalanga province, South Africa, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The empirical investigation is motivated by the dearth of empirical literature on agricultural cooperatives’ performance measurement and its correlates.

The study employed DEA and applied the input minimisation constraint. The authors used the data from 19 agricultural cooperatives which had complied with reporting on their annual financial statements (AFS) in the financial year 2014/2015. The input variables were total assets and total expenses, and the output variables were revenue and profit.

The average technical efficiency was found to be 72 per cent efficient indicating the presence of 28 per cent resource wastages. Of the 19 decision-making units, only 5 (26 per cent) were 100 per cent efficient. It should be noted that the 26 per cent that were technically efficient were also operating at constant returns to scale (optimal resource allocation).

Data limitation was with regard to 19 cooperatives, which means that if more agricultural cooperatives could be analysed, the results will be different.

There are more than 60 agricultural cooperatives in the province, and yet only 19 could report on their AFS. This is an indication that there is a gap in governance, and policy makers and government need to revisit support, over and above funding, and issues of governance have to be strengthened.

Agricultural cooperatives are created as vehicles that can stimulate the economy and contribute towards job creation. If the cooperatives do not perform or are not sustainable, the socio-economic conditions of the communities in which they operate will never realise the economic gains.

The study was necessitated by the continued focus on government based on the cooperatives, as there is a dearth of empirical literature separating managers’ reports and empirically proven studies/results.

This paper examines the sluggish adjustment of deposit interest rate categories with response to policy rate changes in a developing economy.

Symmetric and asymmetric error correction models (ECMs) are employed to test the pass-through effect and adjustment speed of deposit rates when above or below their equilibrium levels.

The findings reveal an incomplete pass-through effect in both the short run and long run while mixed results of symmetric and asymmetric adjustment speed across the different deposit rate categories are observed. Collusive pricing arrangement behavior is supported by deposit rate categories that adjust more rigidly upwards than downwards, while negative customer reaction behavior is supported by deposit rate categories that adjust more rigidly downwards than upwards.

Even though the findings indicate an aspect of increased responsiveness over the period, the sluggish adjustment of deposit rates imply that monetary policy is still ineffective and not uniform across the different deposit rate categories.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to empirically examine both symmetric and asymmetric adjustment behavior of deposit interest rate categories in Kenya. The findings are key to policy makers as they provide insights on how long it takes to adjust different deposit rate categories to monetary policy decisions. In addition, the behavior of deposit rates partly explains why interest rates capping was imposed in Kenya in 2016.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the financial sustainability of Tanzanian saving and credit cooperatives (SACCOs).

The data set used in this study comes from SACCOs’ audited financial reports for the year 2011. The performance was estimated using return on asset (ROA) and financial sustainability was estimated using the ratio of total expenses to total revenue. Linear regression was used to investigate the determinants of financial sustainability.

The results show that, about 61 per cent of the sample SACCOs is operationally sustainable and 51 per cent of the total sample is both operationally and financially sustainable. The average sustainability score was 127 per cent. On average, the results for profitability (measured by ROA) is higher than some of the results reported for standard microfinance in the region and globally. In terms of sustainability the result forecasts a promising future for financial cooperative business model as an alternative form of financing the poor.

Only SACCOs with audited financial statements were included in the study, thus the conclusion is limited to SACCOs with similar characteristics. Future work might consider extending the analysis to include SACCOs with non-audited financial statements.

Based on the sample SACCOs can under good management can be used as a sustainable social conduit for financial access and social economic development among the poor in Tanzania.

This study contributes in two ways. First, it contributes towards the scanty empirical literature on the performance of SACCOs in developing countries and in Tanzania in particular. Second, it provides provocative evidence which appears to contradict earlier and more pessimistic accounts and it challenges the ontology about extending member-based microfinance.