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| Daw San Yi is a 30 year old housewife living at Park Chaung Phyan
village under Bogalay township, in Delta Zone of Myanmar (Burma). She has six
children. The family has no land or any other asset. She and her husband were just living
by selling labor and some fishing, if they could hire some fishing net under any terms.
Their lives were really miserable where San Yi joined the Grameen project in late 1997.
San
Yi has now three fishing nets, one prawn filter, and a rowing boat. They are raising pigs,
selling fish and growing some crops in a small piece of land. Three of their children are
going to school. |
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The Grameen Bank Replication Project (GBRP) was
started in Delta Zone of Myanmar in August 1997. The main features of the project may be
summarized as follows:
It is directly implemented by Grameen Trust (GT) which
is
committed to the cause of poverty alleviation through GB replication worldwide.
It focuses exclusively on the poorest women.
It follows the Grameen Bank Financial System (GBFS).
It is based on ‘Build, Operate and Transfer
(BOT)’ principle.
It is being implemented by a group of well-trained
professional staff.
Myanmar Government is providing necessary support to
implement the project.
Grameen Trust has been implementing the project in
Myanmar with the financial support from UNDP/UNOPS, Kuala Lumpur. It has hired six senior
staff from Grameen Bank and posted them in the project area as zonal and branch managers.
Other members of the staff were recruited locally. About 70% of the staff are women. All
the local staff were trained in Grameen philosophy and its system by the zonal and branch
managers. The project is headed by the zonal manager. It has 5 branches operating in Bogalay,
Mawlamyinegyun and Labuta townships of Delta zone. The zonal office is located
in Bogalay Township, 72 miles away from Yangon.
The project was reaching 18,715 borrowers by the end of November, 1999.
They are all women. The total amount of loan disbursed was Kyats 239,180,000 (US$
767,020). The amount of outstanding loan was US$ 311,829. The borrowers are engaged in a
variety of income generating activities including raising of pigs and ducks, which
received 50% of total loan disbursed by the project. The rate of repayment is amazingly
hundred percent.
Delta is one of the poorest areas in Myanmar. It is a riverine region with boat as the
only means of transportation during most of the year. Women constitute 49% of its
population. The poorest of them have no access to capital at all. The only income earning
opportunity for them is to hire themselves out at a low wage or go for fishing by hiring
boat and net on unfavorable terms.
| Having
heard about the project and its activities, Daw Khin Pyone, who was struggling for
survival with two children and her husband, decided to join a Grameen group. She is 51.
They had three acres of cultivable land which was not enough to make both ends meet. The
situation became extremely difficult for them as Khin Pyone’s husband became
seriously ill. She did not know how to pay back the loan, how to meet the expenses of
medical treatment for her husband and manage two square meals for the family. They sold
the cultivable land and the family was in deep financial distress. In such a desperate
situation, she became a member of Grameen Bogalay Township Branch. Daw Khim Pyone got her
1st loan of Ks. 6,000 in November, 1997 (US$ 1=Ks.312) and bought 16 ducks.
After repaying the first loan in 50 instalments with interest, she received Ks. 10,000 as
second cycle loan in November 1998. She bought a pig and pig food with this loan. The pig
delivered six piglets. This gave her a boost. She was able to pay back her loan to the
project by selling 4 piglets after few months. Her asset base expanded with 16 ducks, one
pig and two piglets. She applied for the third and she received Ks. 20,000 with which she
bought 160 ducks and scaled up the farm. Her micro loans not only enabled her to meet
basic needs of her family, but also enabled her to go for implementation of 15 decisions
of the project members to improve the quality of their life. She is now drinking boiled
water and using pit-latrine. Like all others who have joined Grameen in Delta Zone, she
now hopes to cross the poverty line very soon. |
The project is doing well in terms
of staff productivity, portfolio quality, repayment rate, increasing outreach, cost
recovery and savings mobilization. The project is covering 40% of its operational cost
from its interest earning. It charges 20% interest on its loans to borrowers and pays them
5% interest on their saving deposits. The interest is collected in weekly instalments
along with the weekly loan repayment. The rate of weekly savings is Ks. 20.
There have been, however, some drop out of
borrowers and staff members from the project. The borrowers dropped mainly because of
their decision to migrate to other places in the hope of higher income. The staff members
left, either because they got more remunerative jobs elsewhere or because they failed to
stand upto the job requirements. Some of them left the job simply because they considered
their journey by boat to center meeting and borrowers’ houses through turbulent
rivers as highly risky, especially during the monsoon.
The Grameen project in Myanmar has just
completed its first phase. Although, it had the target of reaching 13,335 households by
the end of first phase, it has already reached about 19000 borrowers and directly
benefited around 100,000 persons belonging to their families. GT has already signed an
agreement with UNOPS for the next phase of the project.
GT is working on its BOT model further in order
to make sure that it can gradually withdraw its Bangladeshi staff and hand over the
project to the locals under a well developed institutional framework.
By H. I.
Latifee
Grameen Trust |
