Shared Interest - The Nature of The Financial Requirement

The Nature of The Financial Requirement

International trade and production involves long processes which take much time. For example, many months elapse between the sowing of a crop in the tropics and the final purchase by a consumer of a finished product in a European supermarket. The money laid out at each stage of production and distribution is called working capital. For smaller producer organisations to access international markets on terms consistent with their independence, if at all, requires access to working capital, by both producers and fair trade distributors, beyond what is available from banks. Normally this extra working capital would come from profit-maximising shareholders in some form or from accumulated past profits. Shared Interest provides unsecured finance, similar to trade credit. Shared Interest can do this only because its own members are prepared to accept the risk of loss on their investment in Shared Interest, and to accept the limited and currently lower financial returns resulting from the high costs of dealing with emerging organisations in the Global South.