The Citibank Tanzania Limited is now getting involved in micro-finance lending through agencies specialized in lending to the poor.
In testimony of its new direction, Citibank has lately provided 24m/- to Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC) for on-lending to small business women in Dar es Salaam region, surely a move from away from traditional focus on merchant banking.
BRAC is a specialized international micro-financing body which was launched in Tanzania in June last year with the objective of providing micro-credit to the increasing number of undeserved poor.
Since its establishment, it has managed to extend loans to more than 40,158 borrowers constituted into 53,662 group members who have absorbed 7.1bn/- amount of different micro-loans.
BRAC?s country programme co-coordinator Dr. Bari Chowdhury spoke about these impressive figures while presenting a cheque to one of the beneficiary women groups, the Mwamuko Group, and was upbeat that loan repayment rates by women borrowers was high.
The official was briefing visiting Citibank boss Africa Division Zdenek Turek about the status of the more than 1000 groups of BRAC beneficiaries in Tanzania, each with a maximum members of 25.
`We are keeping the size of these groups to the maximum of 25 to 30 members within to make them manageable and effective in terms of service provision` he said.
He said that beneficiaries were getting between 100,000/- and 450,000/- loan sizes depending on the nature of the applicants? businesses, with an interest of 20 percent per year.
One of the microfinance beneficiaries Amina Said, a street food vendor, claimed that the 150,000/- loan she had obtained from BRAC has enabled her send her children to school as well as re-capitalizing her businesses.
Another food vendor Hadija told the guest that she was realizing 9,000/- sales per day, which gave an average daily profit of 3000/-.
The BRAC microfinance Trainer Anita Liyoka said that before one could access their credit services; one must in the first place, owning a running business that needs working capital boost.
Dr. Bari said that apart from micro financing, his organization plans to provide credit lines in the areas of health, agriculture and livestock.
In December last year, BRAC Tanzania received grants worth USD 3,079,000 for piloting health and agriculture micro-lending projects. Negotiation was also underway to secure additional commercial funding for the scaling up of microfinance activities.
BRAC also operates in Uganda and in Southern Sudan. In all its initiatives BRAC aims at implementing unique integrated development approach to poverty reduction by incorporating education, health, water and sanitation components along with microfinance.
SOURCE: Guardian
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