Бангладештің Grameen Банкі: Шағын несие және ауылдық даму жолы

Bank and microfinancer in Bangladesh

The bank's success has inspired similar projects in more than 64 countries around the world, including a World Bank initiative to finance Grameen type schemes.

Muhammad Yunus was inspired during the Bangladesh famine of 1974 to make a small loan of US$27 to a group of 42 families as start up money so that they could make items for sale, without the burdens of high interest under predatory lending. Yunus believed that making such loans available to a larger population could stimulate businesses and reduce the widespread rural poverty in Bangladesh. Yunus developed the principles of the Grameen Bank from his research and experience. Grameen Bank is Bengali for "Rural" or "Village" Bank. He began a research project, together with a national commercial bank and the University of Chittagong, extending microcredit to test his method for providing credit and banking services to the rural poor. In 1976, the village of Jobra became the first to be served by the project. Over the next two years, the project expanded to other villages in the area. The project, with support from the Bangladesh Bank, was extended in 1979 to the Tangail District (to the north of the capital, Dhaka). The project's services expanded to other districts of Bangladesh over the next few years. Bankers Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton of ShoreBank, a community development bank in Chicago, helped Yunus with the official incorporation of the bank under a grant from the Ford Foundation. The bank's repayment rate suffered from the economic disruption following the 1998 flood in Bangladesh, but it recovered in the subsequent years. By the beginning of 2005, the bank had loaned over US$4.7 billion and by the end of 2008, $7.6 billion to the poor. In 2011, the Bangladesh government forced Yunus to resign from Grameen Bank, saying that at age 72, he was years beyond the legal limit for the position. Grameen Bank soon began expanding into wealthy countries as well. As of 2017, Grameen America had 19 branches in eleven US cities. Its nearly 100,000 borrowers were all women. In the initial years, donor agencies used to provide the bulk of capital at low rates. By the mid 1990s, the bank started to get most of its funding from the central bank of Bangladesh. More recently, Grameen has started bond sales as a source of finance. The bonds are implicitly subsidised, as they are guaranteed by the Government of Bangladesh, and still they are sold above the bank rate. In 2013, Bangladesh parliament passed 'Grameen Bank Act' which replaces the Grameen Bank Ordinance, 1983, authorising the government to make rules for any aspect of the running of the bank. Grameen has offered credit to classes of people formerly underserved: the poor, women, illiterate, and unemployed people. Access to credit is based on reasonable terms, such as the group lending system and weekly instalment payments, with reasonably long terms of loans, enabling the poor to build on their existing skills to earn better income in each cycle of loans. It targets the poorest of the poor, with a particular emphasis on women, who receive upwards of 95 percent of the bank's loans. Women traditionally had less access to financial alternatives of ordinary credit lines and incomes. They were seen to have an inequitable share of power in household decision making. Yunus and others have found that lending to women generates considerable secondary effects, including empowerment of a marginalised segment of society (Yunus and Jolis 1998), who share betterment of income with their children, unlike many men. Yunus claims that in 2004, women still have difficulty getting loans; they comprise less than 1 percent of borrowers from commercial banks (Yunus 2004). The interest rates charged by microfinance institutes including Grameen Bank is high compared to that of traditional banks; Grameen's interest (reducing balance basis) on its main credit product is about 20%. Grameen has diversified the types of loans it makes. It supports hand powered wells and loans to support the enterprises of Grameen members' immediate relatives. It has found that seasonal agricultural loans and lease to own agreements for equipment and livestock help the poor establish better agriculture. The bank has set a new goal: to make each of its branch locations free of poverty, as defined by benchmarks such as having adequate food and access to clean water and latrines. 18 Decisions We shall reflect on the following four principles of Grameen Bank in every sphere of life to make it a prosperous organization through the members of the Center: Discipline, Unity, Courage, Hard Work. We shall improve our quality of life by bringing prosperity to our families. We shall arrange for safe accommodation. We shall build improved and durable houses at the earliest. We shall cultivate vegetables throughout the year, meet our own nutrition needs by having plenty of them, and increase income by selling the same. During the planting season, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible to protect the environment and create our own resources. We shall plan to keep our families small by having maximum two children. If possible, one will be the priority. We shall ensure all types of vaccinations for our children. We shall ensure education of all children of the members of the center and shall educate them in technical and higher studies. We shall keep our environment clean and tidy and ensure health care for all members of our families. We shall use Sanitary Latrine and clean our hands with soap. We shall drink tube well water. We shall use pure water in every household work. We shall avoid dowry in the marriage of our son and daughter, and shall not entertain child marriage. We shall confirm marriage registration. We shall treat everyone well. We shall live together in family and in society. We shall create new entrepreneurs to make our children self reliant. We shall always help each other. If anyone in the center falls in any danger, we shall rescue him from the danger together. We shall be careful in conducting the transaction; we shall not transact without the passbook and shall keep the passbook with our own. We shall regularly attend the center meeting and we pay back our loan regularly. We shall pay attention to the savings and we shall save in the bank regularly. We shall ensure discipline in our center. We shall do all the social work together. Grameen Bank is best known for its system of solidarity lending. At every branch of Grameen Bank, the borrowers recite these Decisions and vow to follow them. As a result of the Sixteen Decisions, Grameen borrowers have been encouraged to adopt positive social habits. One such habit includes educating children by sending them to school. Since the Grameen Bank embraced the Sixteen Decisions, almost all Grameen borrowers have their school age children enrolled in regular classes. This in turn helps bring about social change, and educate the next generation. Solidarity lending is a cornerstone of microcredit, and the system is now used in more than 43 countries. Repayment responsibility rests solely on the individual borrower. No formal joint liability exists, i. e. group members are not obliged to pay on behalf of a defaulting member. But, in practice the group members often contribute the defaulted amount with an intention to collect the money from the defaulted member at a later time. Such behaviour is encouraged because Grameen does not extend further credit to a group in which a member defaults. No legal instrument (i. e. no written contract) is made between Grameen Bank and its borrowers; the system works based on trust. To supplement the lending, Grameen Bank requires the borrowing members to save very small amounts regularly in a number of funds, designated for emergency, the group, etc. These savings help serve as an insurance against contingencies. In other areas, Grameen has had very high payback rates—over 98 percent. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, in 2001 a fifth of the bank's loans were more than a year overdue. Grameen says that more than half of its borrowers in Bangladesh (close to 50 million) have risen out of acute poverty thanks to their loan, as measured by such standards as having all children of school age in school, all household members eating three meals a day, a sanitary toilet, a rainproof house, clean drinking water, and the ability to repay a 300 taka a week (around US$4) loan. The bank is also engaged in social business and entrepreneurship fields. In 2009, the Grameen Creative Lab collaborated with the Yunus Centre to create the Global Social Business Summit. The meeting has become the main platform for social businesses worldwide to foster discussions, actions and collaborations to develop effective solutions to the most pressing problems plaguing the world.

The bank has diversified among different applications of microcredit. In the Village Phone program, women entrepreneurs can start businesses to provide wireless payphone service in rural areas. This program earned the bank the 2004 Petersburg Prize worth EUR 100,000, for its contribution of Technology to Development. In the press release announcing the prize, the Development Gateway Foundation noted that through this program:

<blockquote>  Grameen has created a new class of women entrepreneurs who have raised themselves from poverty. Moreover, it has improved the livelihoods of farmers and others who are provided access to critical market information and lifeline communications previously unattainable in some 28,000 villages of Bangladesh. More than 55,000 phones are currently in operation, with more than 80 million people benefiting from access to market information, news from relatives, and more. This program is focused on distributing small loans to beggars.

In 1984, Grameen applied to the Central Bank for help setting up a housing loan program for its borrowers. Their application was rejected on the grounds that the US$125 suggested loan could not possibly build a suitable living structure. So Grameen instead proposed the idea of "shelter loans". They were again rejected, this time on the grounds that their borrowers could not afford non income generating loans. Grameen changed tactics and applied a third time, this time to make "factory loans", the explanation being that borrowers worked from home, so the home was also a factory that made it possible for borrowers to earn income. Grameen was rejected for a third time. After this third rejection, Yunus, the bank's founder, met personally with the Central Bank governor to plead for their application. When asked if he thought the borrowers would repay the loans, he replied, "Yes, they will. They do. Unlike the rich, the poor cannot risk not repaying. This is the only chance they have." Grameen was then allowed to add housing loans to their range of services. As of 1999, Grameen made housing loans totalling $190 million to build over 560,000 homes with near perfect repayment. By 1989, their average housing loan had grown to $300. That year, the Grameen housing program received the Aga Khan International Award for Architecture.

Grameen Bank is owned by the borrowers of the bank, most of whom are poor women. Initially, of the total equity of the bank, the government owned 60% in 1983. This then dropped over time to a single digit percentage by the early 2010s. However, by the mid 2010s, this number increased again to 25%. The bank grew significantly between 2003 and 2007. As of January 2022, the total borrowers of the bank number nearly 9.5 million, and 96.81% of those are women. Similar growth can be observed in the number of villages covered. As of October 2007, the Bank had a staff of more than 24,703 employees; its 2,468 branches provided services to 80,257 villages, David Roodman has critiqued the accounting practices that Grameen used to determine this rate.

The film To Catch a Dollar (2010) documents the process of establishing Grameen America programs in Queens, New York in 2008. It premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary film Living on One Dollar (2010) includes Grameen Bank providing microcredit to start small home businesses in a rural Guatemalan village. The documentary is available directly from the organisation "Living on One" , and on Netflix.