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Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) has begun a loan scheme for single mothers to help them support their children through operating their own businesses. Women who are widowed or divorced can form groups of three and borrow up MR$10,000 (US$2,600) to start any enterprise. While this new scheme is not restricted to those under the poverty line, like those in AIM's main program, single mothers form a large, and often desperate, group in rural and urban Malaysia.
Poor fishermen will be the beneficiaries of a Fishermen's Initiative Fund which will be operated by AIM from new branches to be opened in coastal areas in Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Johor and Selangor. AIM hopes that 25,000 fishermen will benefit, with interest-free loans of between MR$2,000 and$10,000 to buy fishing equipment. The funds, of up to MR$4 million, will be provided by the government-owned Malaysian Fisheries Development Board.
AIM, witch has operated in peninsular Malaysia for more that ten years and reached 50,000 members (estimated as more than half of the hard-core poverty group in the country) has turned its sights on the much poorer East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. It already has a branch in each state and will open three more in Sabah by June and two more in Sarawak.
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