Liliw Municipal Employees Multi-Purpose Cooperative (LMEMPC) in Liliw, Laguna started as a credit union in the early 90s but eventually emerged as a cooperative and registered with the CDA-Calamba Extension Office on November 14, 1995 because of the dire need for the group to be legally recognized together with the increasing demands for the financial aspects of the employees. In the beginning, it was just a simple cooperative that offered credit transactions among the members with an initial paid-up capital of P68,000.00 and was led by its first-ever Chairman Eduardo del Mundo. Now, the cooperative caters to the needs of the municipality and its barangays after being recognized by the PhilGEPS as a supplier and has a 3.2 million paid-up capital.

Just like other institutional-based cooperatives, its operation is a big challenge because the officers were just including the management of the cooperative in their municipal’s workloads thus it failed to comply with the respective reports needed by the regulatory and other agencies. It was then in 2012, under the new sets of officers, when the BOD decided to hire an employee to facilitate the credit transactions and act as compliance officer. They added another employee in 2017 and then another, to date, the LMEMPC has three (3) employees – a loan officer, an accountant/bookkeeper, and a compliance officer. As of now, the cooperative is occupying its own space beside the Municipal Hall and also acquired a service van for rentals.

Office of LMEMPC

To finance the credit demands of the members, the cooperative became a member of the Laguna Credit Surety Fund in 2017. They invested an amount of 100,000 and in return, the cooperative was granted an amount of one million loan to capital their lending activities. This loan had been paid in less than a year at very low interest which caused the cooperative’s assets to increase to seven (7) Million.

Due to the rising income of the cooperative, of course, the community had not been left behind. Various community activities are carried out every year with the help of funds earmarked for the Community Development Fund.

As compared before, many members do not take part in its Annual Regular General Assembly Meeting (ARGAM), but now this is what they are looking forward to. The Interest on Share Capital and Patronage Refund (ISCPR) they annually receive is a great assistance to their financial needs in addition to the fast loan process without any collateral except their capital invested and given in a very low interest rate.

“It is true that the cooperative lends a helping hand to its members, especially for those employees who only depend on their meager salary” according to the current Chairperson Mr. Jhun Orlanda.