People’s credit in Atjeh (volkscredietwezen) — the chain of institutions from the interest-free government advances of the Van Daalen and Swart years to the Groot-Atjehsche Afdeelingsbank (September 1908), the kampong banks and the credit banks of Lho Seumawè and Langsar (1913) — was the colonial answer to the usurer (woekeraar) who bought the Atjehnese peasant’s crop far below value through advances, and to the lack of agricultural, industrial and trade credit in the province.
Advances
Interest-free advances were the gear of every welfare measure of the period: advances from the road fund (wegenfonds) for the laying-out or extension of pepper and coconut gardens (Van Daalen), advances for sea-fisheries, fish-ponds and salt-pans, advances for plough-cattle (the North Coast), advances to resistance-fighters who had submitted and to chiefs whose dwellings or koeta’s had been destroyed by evildoers (Swart) — funds requested from and granted by the Government.
The Afdeelingsbank, 1908
The first step toward the regulation of the people’s credit was taken by Governor Van Daalen with his proposal for the Groot-Atjehsche Afdeelingsbank, aimed at “de bestrijding van den woeker en het verleenen van landbouw-, nijverheids- en handelscredieten” (“fighting usury and giving agricultural, industrial and trade credits”); the bank materialized in September 1908 under Governor Swart. Because the bank insufficiently answered the purpose set at its foundation, and “the really credit-needing among the native population were not reached — this also a consequence of the less good action of her agents”, Governor Swart tried to bring improvement, and at the same time did the necessary for the founding of kampongbankjes (kampong banks), whose working capital was furnished by the credit-needing in the kampong itself: “In 1916 waren in de afdeeling Groot-Atjeh vijf van die bankjes, in 1918 negen en twintig” — in 1916 there were five of those banks in the department Groot-Atjeh, in 1918 twenty-nine.
The regional credit banks, 1913
“As at Koeta Radja the Afdeelingsbank for Groot-Atjeh was founded, there arose in 1913 a credit bank at Lho-Seumawé for the North Coast and one at Langsar for the East Coast. Also at the foundation of these two banks the fighting of usury and the supporting of the native trade, agriculture and industry had been intended.” The banks joined the landscape- and sub-department-treasuries of the self-governing landscapes (introduced under Swart, watched by the assistant-resident at disposal since 1913, with a bookkeeper for the administration), and the municipal-in-embryo “plaatselijke fondsen” regulated by Governor Van Sluys’s new regulation of 1922 for the local funds — “the autonomy introduced in embryonal state for several places of Atjeh”, the ”gemeenteraden in spé” reported in the Atjehsch Nieuwsblad.
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 89–91, 99, 104, 109–110, 122.