Campaign To Give Loans To Churches Launched

The Christian Community Microfinance Company (CCML) has launched a campaign to give loans to churches at very competitive rates. The campaign, dubbed �Consolidation of Church Financing�, is aimed at supporting churches financially through the loan facility for developmental projects and assets acquisition. The General Manager in charge of Marketing at the CCML, Mr Joseph Oppong, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said the CCML had already supported more than 5,000 churches, noting that the aim of the campaign was to increase the number to 15,000. Explaining the campaign, the Marketing Communications Manager of the CCML, Ms Sylvia Adobea Adadey, said the overall objective was to raise awareness of the CCML�s tradition of helping the Christian community by partnering churches financially. According to her, some of the benefits to be derived from accessing a CCML loan are a low-cost financial solution for a high-cost project, a one-year moratorium on repayment and free financial and technical advice from experts. �The CCML offers free insurance cover over the loan period and no mandatory account operation is required before accessing the facility,� she added. CCML profile The CCML is fully owned by the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) and has 24 operational units nationwide. The CCML, as the first microfinance institution in Ghana, began as the Ecumenical Church Loan Fund (ECLOF), the loan dispensing programme established in 1979 by the CCG and ECLOF International. It has as its mission �promoting the use of credit in order to help organise the life of the church in Ghana� but later changed its name to ECLOF Ghana. In 2012, ECLOF Ghana was transformed into the limited liability company, CCML.