"Indigenous bank in Costa Rica may mirror better Aboriginal capital access in Canada"

A promising new application of the kind of professional and management skills transfer that has been the hallmark of an non-profit organization called CESO (also known as the Canadian Executive Service Organization) for over 25 years is now underway in the Central American country of Costa Rica.

The non-government development organization is crossing its collective fingers at the possibility that this Central American project may be the first in a long line of North/South initiatives linking the economic interests of Indigenous peoples throughout the hemisphere.

The Asociacion de Cultural Sejetko (roughly equivalent to the Canadian association of friendship centres) in Talamance, Costa Rica, approached CESO in June to assist in creating that country's first Indigenous peoples' bank. Seed money of $500,000 has been provided by the Inter-American Development Bank, a division of the International Monetary Fund.

The bank will serve the primarily Mayan indigenous population of the Cordillera de Talamanca region, the mountainous south central frontier area near the Panamanian border.

The Costa Rican project is unique for a Canadian NGO, and unique for CESO, in that it brings together both an international and domestic mandate, CESO has two distinct arms, CESO Aboriginal Services and CESO International Services. Both have the specific approach of using Canadian management and technical expertise in a business-to-business manner to further the cause of economic development.

CESO has a total roster list of about 4,200 retired or semi-retired Canadian professionals, including over 200 men and women with banking and financial services backgrounds. These volunteers offer their skills on a cost-recovery basis to help developing economics both overseas and in Aboriginal communities in Canada.

The Costa Rican project also offers a first time opportunity for CESO banking professionals to use their skills to assist an indigenous population in Latin America. Until now most of their international banking work has been confined to helping the emerging market economics of Eastern Europe.

Volunteer Adviser Ken Mitchell is a member of CESO Aboriginal Services' banking advisory group, and is a potential choice to head up the Costa Rica project. If the project's a go, he will soon be flying down to the capital city of San Jose, and then on by charter aircraft to Talamanca, to meet with Asociacion representative Jose Dualok Rojas, the odds-on choice to be named as bank president.

Mr. Mitchell has 42 years of banking experience with the Bank of Nova Scotia, and has a special interest in development banking. In 1990-91 he worked extensively with the Polish development bank of Polski Bank Rozwoju S.A., to bring about modern, market-driven banking practices in Poland after the fall of communism. Polski Bank Rozwoju has since gone on to become a significant mercantile banking entity in Poland, and a major player in the corporate restructuring of that country into a free market economy.

"The particular of the two countries will obviously be different," explains Mitchell, "but I expect to find quite a few similarities too. Banking is banking, after all - it's all about risk management.

"Once you find out what the board of directors, or the country, or whom ever it is who's at the controls - once you find out what they want to accomplish, you can begin to draft the policies and practices that will govern the bank's activities.

"The object of setting all this out beforehand, of course, is to manage the bank's exposure to bad loans. Or at the very least, you want to balance that exposure against the loans that are going to make you some money, so that at the end of the year you still have a viable business on your hands."

This is an exciting development for CESO Aboriginal Services because it represents the cross-fertilization of ideas, the shared approach to knowledge as a tool for economic development, which embody the ideals of the organization.

Since access to pools of capital has been a universal problem among Aboriginal peoples everywhere - and indeed, among the poor and landless everywhere, regardless of ethnicity - improved capital access continues to be one of the primary precursors to the development of local economies. Therefore the banking project in Costa Rica may well have far reaching applications for all the Americas.

But it will be no South American holiday for the CESO volunteer. Conditions in the remote frontier are primitive by Western standards. The town of Talamanca is accessible most times of the year only by plane, a situation which has caused CESO regional representative in Costa Rica, Maria Teresa Casas, some concern.

"We must have a volunteer who is flexible, who can adapt. I myself have never been to Talamance, but I can tell you it is quite different than you are used to," she laughs over the phone from San Jose, the Costa Rican capital.

"This is why I've said in my report that while the technical and financial background is a big thing, it is not the only thing. Who ever comes will have to learn about the Indians and understand them in order to teach them. He or she cannot be flying in and out every day."

She says that what's needed is a liaison between the accounting needs of the IMF (which will deliver on its $500,000 pledge in as yet unspecified number of payments pending proper financial accountability), and the cultural and human needs of the Aboriginal community.

"The most important thing is that we need a person with a special commitment to get this done. It's critical that it be done right because the IMF will be watching, and if it's successful, it can be a model for Indigenous banks throughout Central America."

For more information about this project or about CESO Aboriginal Services, please contact Scott Smith at 1-800-268-9052.