A programme similar to Grameen Bank, specializing in micro-credit for the poor, is currently operating in Montevideo. Such a program has already been operating in Argentina since March, 2000.

Pablo Broder, the representative of Grameen Bank in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, explained to the El Pais, the kind of activity that the bank deals with. He emphasized the State's difficulty in managing this kind of program, and says it is not motivated to "change the economic structure of the society, but to relieve the poverty stricken majority so that they can live with dignity."

Grameen Bank was founded in Bangladesh in 1976, by Muhammad Yunus, (winner of Principe de Asturias prize), as a medium through which micro-loans could be given at low rates of interest, with no need of guarantees to obtain them. The poor were the only ones benefiting from such a program. They were given the loans on account of their neighbors accrediting them with honesty and hard work, Broder explains, and they were made to assist in evaluation meetings and promised to send their children to school.

"Grameen needs to be lasting. The continuous activity flow that we want to get, can be assured through the recovery of loans. In almost all countries where it operates, the rate of loan repayment is more then 90%. We think that the key to ensure this repayment is applying a very hard methodology already tested during the last 25 years. The operators, always volunteers at first, perform this task in a highly efficient way. People interested have to make up groups that don't guarantee individual credits, but are morally co-responsible"

The initial capital for Grameen type program is built on donations. For further information contact us at: grameen@intercanal.com.uy, Grameen is already operating in the Argentinean deputies of Misiones, Formosa, Mendoza, Neuquen, Buenos Aires, and Santa Fey Chaco.

In Bangladesh it has become successful, as the largest in the country micro-credit program has benefited 2.4 million poor households in the villages.

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Extracted from: EL PAIS Montevideo, January 6, 2001