The National Cooperatives Confederation of Rwanda (NCCR) and 13 other cooperatives have signed performance contracts with government and Rwanda Cooperative Agency (RCA) to enhance service delivery.

The contracts, signed on Thursday in Kigali, were introduced by RCA together with NCCR, highlighting four major performance based programmes.

These include good governance, good management of cooperative properties, quality service delivery, and rallying people to join cooperatives while maintaining existing members.

Most of the cooperatives (10 out of 13) which signed were agro cooperatives, one in mining and the rest in public transport.

The cooperatives committed to ensuring proper annual planning and budgeting, professional training of members and field visits.

They also agreed to promote quality service delivery, embrace ICT, organise meetings and clean audits.

‘‘We commit to submit timely reports,   ad to mobilise women and youth to join cooperatives this year,’’ reads part of the contract.

Presiding over the signing, the Minister for Trade and Industry, Francois Kanimba, commended RCA and NCCR for introducing the performance contracts.

He urged the members to take the contracts seriously and work toward achieving their goals which he said were realistic.

"Cooperatives form a strong foundation of the country’s development and rapid socio-economic transformation. For cooperatives to remain economically sustainable, they must embark on saving and investing because one cannot exist without the other,” the minister told the cooperative leaders.

Kanimba outlined seven elements which he asked the cooperatives to include in their performance targets this year.

These include electing honest and loyal individuals, saving, connecting cooperatives to financial institutions, helping vulnerable veterans, among others.

‘‘Go and work to achieve the set targets since there will be  time for evaluation,’’ the minister told the cooperative leaders.

Damien Mugabo, the director general of Rwanda Cooperative Agency, said the performance contracts would enhance their performance.

All Rwandan institutions work under performance contracts, in our case we delayed but we hope our members will adapt quickly for good results, he said.