Microfinance: Grameen - Banking on the poor

AKI ^ | 2005 Dec 2

[Wiz]

Rome, 2 Dec. (AKI) - What started out as a credit scheme to help 42 people with 27 dollars in a small village in Bangladesh in 1976, is today a bank helping 5.5 million borrowers nationwide disbursing up to 75 million dollars every month. The Grameen Bank was established by Professor Muhammad Yunus to help the rural poor in Bangladesh by providing credit to the poorest of the poor without any collateral. In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI), Dipal Chandra Barua, deputy managing director, explained how this microcredit system has succeeded in countries around the globe.

"Bangladesh is a country that is often hit by floods and cyclones and the people are really desperately poor," said Barua, who has been with the Grameen Bank since its inception. "So with a small capital, they do make a difference in their lives," he said. "They either do or die."

The Grameen Bank is one of the pioneers of micro-credit lending schemes for the poor in Bangladesh. The money, in minute sums, is borrowed mainly by illiterate women, to set up small enterprises. The loans are provided without any collateral or security, and the borrowers, not the bank, decide the business it will be used for. The borrowers also pay as little or as much interest as required to keep the bank self-reliant. On top of that, the borrowers are encouraged to buy shares in the bank once they can afford it.

Mohammad Yunus, a university economics professor in the southern port of Chittagong, could not reconcile why women who were skilled in crafts or cultivating crops were unable to generate enough money to break out of the poverty cycle and any profits were reaped by the middle men, money lenders or employers.

[Wiz]

Grameen Bank is pretty known for its effort with unique system, providing services such as education to its lenders. It would be interesting if the Grameen bank (microcredit) would be in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan for reconstrcution in the lower (micro) level, to rebuild the country after war (while government takes care of macro level such as rebuilding the infrastructure).

[Sonny M]

This is straight out of Hernando De Soto and his beliefs.

Naturally their will be opposition.

[reluctantwarrior]

They are in Afghanistan under the name Women for Women, It is in three provinces(was in 2004) and was supposed to go national by 2006. It was a great program with little bureaucracy.