Grameen Bank

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Grameen Bank

logo
legal form Public
founding 1983
Seat Dhaka
Number of employees 16,142 (2005)
Branch banks and insurance companies
Website http://www.grameen.com/

Main building of the Grameen Bank in Dhaka

The Grameen Bank ( Bengali : গ্রামীণ ব্যাংক , Gramin Byāṃk ; about: Village Bank) is founded in 1983, microfinance - financial institution that does not match credit protection but with peer pressure microloans to people with no income securities in Bangladesh awards and tried the poverty of the population alleviate.

The Grameen Bank also includes companies in the telephone ( Grameenphone ), energy ( Grameen Shakti ), textile and construction industries and other services.

Idea and foundation

The bank was founded on October 2, 1983 by the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus . After a major famine in Bangladesh, Yunus began looking for a solution in 1976 to improve the situation of the poor in the country. His observations showed that the poor people only needed a small amount of capital for their economic success to purchase materials or raw materials for their craft . But because they could only take out loans from moneylenders with exorbitant interest or were dependent on their raw material suppliers, the poorest people hardly made any profit.

The big banks were unwilling to provide loans to these people due to a lack of collateral. Another reason for banks with a normal structure is the imbalance between the high workload per customer and the low amount of microloans, which, however, are granted at market rates.

Muhammad Yunus

Yunus himself described the situation as follows:

“I saw that people were working hard. But still they remained poor. Why? They told me it was because they had no capital. So in order to buy materials for making simple furniture or ingredients for the food they cooked and sold on the street, they had to borrow money: either from the people who made the raw materials available to them and then also made them for them Paid for products, or with the moneylender who charged horrendous interest. Either way - there was hardly anything left for them at the end of a long working day. "

In 1976, Yunus began lending money. His experience was positive and he soon got the loans back with interest. He developed a system in which the borrowers - almost exclusively women - felt obliged to repay due to personal ties. And they became members and co-owners of the bank. Grameen Bank also belongs to its customers. For this reason, Grameen Bank loans were only offered on the condition that small groups formed in the villages that were trained by bank employees and vouched for one another . Only when the first two group members had regularly repaid their personal loan for a while did the next two in turn receive a loan, so that repayment on time was in everyone's interest. More than 98% of initial loans, often less than $ 50, have been repaid. In addition, the members had to undertake to set up a savings account at the Grameen Bank and to use it continuously.

Grameen Bank sets two conditions for granting the loans:

  • The applicant must explain what he wants to use the borrowed money for.
  • The acquisition of radio or television sets with this money is prohibited.

Social programs

The Grameen Bank lends interest-free loans of up to 100 taka (rounded 1.05 euros on August 13, 2017) to beggars. In addition to free life insurance, the terms are unusually long. Borrowers are not forced to give up begging. However, with this program, the repayment rates are greater than 50%.

The subsidiaries Grameen Telecom and Grameenphone provide telephone connections to many villages in Bangladesh. Through loan brokerage, women buy a telephone which they then rent out.

Todays situation

In October 2007 the bank (according to its own information) had 7.34 million borrowers, 97% of them women. The total amount of money lent to date is $ 6.55 billion. The bank has 2,468 branches with 24,703 employees who look after over 70% (80,257) of the villages. 98.35% of the granted loans are repaid. The bank is 94% owned by customers and 6% owned by the state. Over time, the bank also developed its own programs in which loans on special terms - e. B. Family home loans.

The concept of the bank is now used in 60 developing countries. In the over 30-year history of the bank, there have only been three years in which the bank was in the red.

In March 2011, Muhammad Yunus was dismissed as Managing Director of Grameen Bank for reasons of age. He took legal action against his release without success. According to the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, Grameen Bank is a state institution and not a private bank, so a state retirement age of 60 applies to all employees. Yunus was already 70 years old at this point. In connection with this dispute, he accused the government of Bangladesh of wanting to bring the Grameen Bank under its control. The bank would become a government organization and its life's work would be jeopardized by mismanagement, inefficiency and the pursuit of profit.

Appreciations

Yunus was (among others) in 1994 with the World Food Prize in 1998 with the Sydney Peace Prize and in 2006 with the "ITU World Information Society Award" of the ITU excellent. In the same year, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded equally to Grameen Bank and its founder, Yunus, for promoting economic and social development. The project is supported by Ashoka . In 2000 the bank received the Gandhi Peace Prize from the Government of India.

criticism

Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute complains that the bank would not be viable without government funding. In addition, the bank employees intervened in a curious way in the private lives of the borrowers.

The bank apparently cannot overcome traditional role models. Cases of abuse of the system by husbands are known. According to local studies (despite a ban by the Grameen Bank), dowry demands have increased significantly.

Sudhirendar Sharma reports of groups that lend loans at higher rates and siphon off the profits. He predicts negative long-term consequences for the project because living conditions would not improve and poverty capitalization would increase.

A feature of Deutschlandfunk reported on July 20, 2010 critically about the successes and the methods with which the bank works. The loan intermediaries work on a commission basis and seem to be pushing customers into microloans. Delinquent debtors (especially debtors) are under both psychological and physical pressure from debt collectors to maintain the installment payments and people are forced into a structure of long-term debt bondage. Furthermore, the track record of this micro-credit model is proving to be modest. 20% of customers make the leap into success, while 80% of customers remain in debt bondage.

literature

  • Muhammad Yunus: Grameen - A bank for the world's poor. ISBN 3-7857-0948-X .
  • Jens Schröder, GMB Akash: The barefoot bench. Nazma Begums loan to the future. GEO 10/2006, pp. 94-102, Gruner + Jahr, Hamburg.
  • Peter Spiegel, Roger Richter, Hans Reitz (Eds.): The Power of Dignity - Die Kraft der Würde. The Grameen Family. J. Kamphausen Verlag, Bielefeld, ISBN 978-3-89901-169-2 .
  • Gerhard Klas: The microfinance industry - the great illusion or the business with poverty. Association A, Berlin / Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86241-401-7 .
  • Gerhard Klas, Philip Mader (eds.): Making returns and doing good? Microcredit and the Consequences of Neoliberal Development Policy. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2014, ISBN 978-3-593-50112-3 .

Web links

Commons : Grameen Bank  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.grameen-info.org/annualreport/annualreport2005/GB-2005.pdf
  2. ↑ http://www.grameen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=338&Itemid=170
  3. ↑ Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (Ed.): Combating poverty - why, what for and above all: how? Bonn 1995, p. 72ff.
  4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.microcreditsummit.org
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.grameenfoundation.org
  6. ↑ http://www.grameen-info.org/bank/GBGlance.htm
  7. ↑ Focus news magazine, issue 20/07, page 240, "In the human zoo"
  8. ↑ NZZ Online on March 9, 2011: Nobel laureate Yunus takes action against his dismissal. Retrieved July 26, 2011 .
  9. ^ Spiegel online on May 13, 2011: Resignation as bank manager. Nobel laureate Yunus gives up. Retrieved July 26, 2011 .
  10. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung on June 24, 2011: Interview. Retrieved July 26, 2011 .
  11. ↑ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2006/press-release/
  12. ↑ The microcredit cult Jeffrey Tucker, October 14, 2006, archive version
  13. ↑ http://www.infochangeindia.org/microc_article5.jsp
  14. ↑ http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendung/dasfeature/1204005/