12-22-2005, 11:46 AM
Grameen Bank a specialised bank established in October 1983 as a body corporate under the Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983 for extending credit exclusively to the landless men and women of rural areas of the country…The bank emerged out of a rural banking project that began in 1976 at Jobra village of HATHAZARI upazila of CHITTAGONG district…The project was an experiment initiated by Dr. Muhammad Yunus…The principal objective of the Grameen Project (GP) was to develop an organisational structure, which can provide collateral-free credit to the landless people in a reasonably dependable form…The project also explored the potentiality of the poor to generate productive self-employment with marginal financial support at reasonable terms and conditions…
The main functions of Grameen Bank are to provide collateral-free credit facilities in cash or in kind to landless persons for various types of income-generating and livelihood activities...The bank also accepts money on deposit, borrows money (against its assets as the security, or otherwise) for the purpose of its business excluding business in foreign exchange transactions...It invests in government securities, provides professional counsel to landless persons regarding investment in small business and cottage industries, and carries out survey and research..
The bank runs its credit programmes with the philosophy that credit for self-employment is a fundamental human right...It takes credit to the doorsteps of the poor instead of the conventional practice of clients coming to banks...The principle works as a powerful instrument in ensuring access of the poor to credit for providing them a chance to improve their economic condition...Through small loans amounting up to $300, Grameen Bank enables the landless, illiterate rural women to start their own businesses and thereby gain some independence, self-sufficiency, self-respect and self-empowerment...Credit delivery mechanism and the mode of repayment of the loans have become a model in POVERTY alleviation efforts in Bangladesh, other developing countries, and in some developed countries such as the USA, Canada, Germany and France...
The Grameen Bank is one of the most innovative and unusual financial institutions in the world...It is a bank for poor people; it is owned by the poor and loans its money to the poor..."Conventional banks are based on the principle that the more you have, the more you can get; if you don't have anything, you don't get anything," Dr. Yunus has said... "Grameen has literally turned this principle completely around..." A majority of Grameen Bank loans go toward what are described as traditional subsistence activities: planting a crop, buying a cow, raising chickens or grinding grain...As a result, people receiving loans not only have better access to food, but they are able to use their meager incomes to secure necessities other than food, such as clothing and shelter...
The Grameen Bank's loans are very small by the standards of western nations...The average non- In many respects, the Grameen Bank has been as much a bold social experiment as a financial one...Loan applicants do not need collateral but must form a group of at least five friends, who serve as loan committee and support group. "The group makes it easy for a poor 'nobody' to take the leap and become an enterprising 'somebody'," Dr. Yunus explained. About 94 percent of the bank's loans are made to women, which Dr. Yunus believes accounts for much of the success of his program.... "Money going through a woman to a household brought more benefit to the household than money entering the household through a man," Dr. Yunus said. "Children get the top priority from the mother. A man often has different priorities. Children represent the future. By addressing the mothers we will be building a better future."
Since its modest beginnings in 1976, the Grameen Bank has opened more than a thousand branches in rural areas, where nine out of ten Bangladeshis live...The bank now serves almost half of Bangladesh's 68,000 villages, or more than 2 million people.. Virtually all of its members are landless or own less than an acre of land...Yet, despite the fact that loan recipients are people who could never get credit from a conventional bank, the Grameen Bank's repayment rate far exceeds that of commercial banks... Almost 98 percent of its loans are repaid with interest...
Under the housing loan scheme of the bank introduced in 1984, a member can borrow up to Tk 25,000 ($500) at an interest rate of 8% for constructing a simple tin-roof house...Housing loans are to be paid back by the members in ten years in weekly instalments...Up to December 1999, more than 510,000 such houses had been constructed against a total amount of loans of Tk 7.44 billion…Sources of funds of the bank are share capital, general and other reserves, various special funds maintained and managed by the bank itself, deposits and balance of other funds, borrowing from banks and other foreign institutions etc...Up to December 1999, it borrowed Tk 11.64 billion and the list of funding institutions/ organisations includes Bangladesh Bank, IFAD, NORAD, SIDA, Ford Foundation, Dutch Grant Loan, Vic Spain and OECF...Grameen Bank also raises funds by issuing bonds and debentures under guarantee of the government of Bangladesh and the rate of interest for these varies between 4% and 10%...
The assets of the bank were valued at Tk 20.47 billion on 31 December 1999...Grameen Bank had earned a net profit of Tk 76.93 million In 1999, which was entirely transferred to Rehabilitation...
Grameen Bank is praised for success in its mission of alleviating poverty....Its success is attributed to employment creation and income generation through its extensive credit programmes for the landless rural poor of both genders....The special features of the institution are its high loan recovery rate, organisation of its members into groups exercising peer pressure in loan repayment and proper utilisation of the loans, close supervision by the bank's field staff, organised advisory services to the clients, and empowerment of the poor, especially the poor rural women by involving them in self-employment and income-generating activities...
Dr. Yunus came to this recognition via an unorthodox route. He is neither a farmer nor an agricultural scientist, and he holds no official policy making position. He is, rather, an economist. In fact, the struggle to alleviate hunger and malnutrition among the world's poorest people, he has often said, is at heart an issue of economics....A Fulbright Scholar at Vanderbilt University, Professor Yunus received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1969...Later that year, he became an assistant professor of Economics at Middle Tennessee State University, USA, before returning to Bangladesh...After a brief stint as deputy chief of the Government of Bangladesh's General Economics Division, Dr. Yunus accepted a teaching position in 1972 at Chittagong University...
"I was not happy with what I was teaching," Dr. Yunus has written. "Economics is supposed to give answers to economic ills. But these textbook answers were not helping the new-born country called Bangladesh.... Good things did not happen. Rather, bad things kept on happening endlessly. The euphoria of creating a dreamland for 75 million people died down quickly. The economy took a nose-dive. It ended up in a famine in 1974."
One day in 1976, while wandering through the villages around Chittagong, Dr. Yunus met a woman named Sophia who made bamboo stools...Because she had no money to buy her own materials, Sophia had become a virtual slave to the trader who gave her bamboo and purchased her stools... "I was shocked by the simplicity of the solution which the situation required and the fact that nobody bothered to pay any attention to her problem," Dr. Yunus said.
Dr. Yunus loaned Sophia and 41 others a total of $30 of his own money... Although he did not know it, he had planted the seed which grew into the Grameen Bank, and a loan program that is now helping to feed millions of people like Sophia the world over...And as much of the world still searches for ways to replace the frequent need for emergency food aid with policies to promote long-term food security, the Grameen Bank has helped show the way.
Sources:
http://banglapedia.com
http://www.grameen-info.org
http://www.worldfoodprize.org
http://www.ms-foundation.org
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